


within the hollow crown

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [81]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angband, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Gen, Goodbye, Psychological Torture, Torture, this is not a nice fic and it's very violent and it is rated M for a reason, title from Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2020-03-04 23:03:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 123,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18822559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Maedhros's life ends in every way but death.





	1. a warm welcome

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone, I assume half of you are here because you just want Angband whump and angst. I see you! I really do suggest you read the preceding 80 fics, though. They're rather important.
> 
> I am not going to tag a million things for this, partly because spoilers, so let me just say: this fic will have copious amounts of dreadful conduct by very dreadful people, none of whom have the least interest in changing their ways. If violence, abuse, manipulation, and bloodiness are not your area, or are triggering, please don't read!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written over the course of many months, and, accordingly, a whole bunch of fics were written in between. If you like you can read the whole thing straight through, but you're better off checking out the "All That Glitters: Angband" series that I've also created. Those fics are posted in order, in that series, and you can read them according to which corresponds with each chapter of Angband. 
> 
> As far as the rest of the AU is concerned, you can read a LOT of what is written afterwards--and should--while still reading this fic. We've included in the tags for each subsequent fic (those that are flashbacks and those that are taking place in, say, Mithrim) that indicate whether they connect to any of the chapters for THIS fic.
> 
> Also, the first fic that I wrote *after* the ending of this--meaning, the first of the only fics that you should really wait until the VERY end to read--is #165.

The world is upside down. 

The ground is above him and it pounds like a drum. After some time, he realizes that it is not the ground that is pounding, but his head, and the hooves that crash painfully close to it. 

( _Hooves?_ ) 

Pain serves as a guide to the outline of his body, and that is how he discovers that he has been stretched over the back of a horse as a man might be bound to a torture wheel. 

As _he_ may soon be bound, he realizes, and then that thought laughs its way into spongy blackness, too awful to chase amidst the drumbeat that rattles his every bone and tooth.  

His hands are tethered to his feet like a saddle would be girthed, and he does not know how much give is in those cords—only that it is not nearly enough. The tendons of his wrists and ankles feel strained to tearing. His wounded arm is a brighter point amid the other hurts. His head is swinging perilously close to the horse’s knees, and the pain _there_ is absolute—sick and heavy behind his eyes at his temples, sharp and bruising at the back of his skull, where he now recalls he was struck again by the butt of Gothmog’s whip _—_

 _—after—_  

He does not want to think of bodies, but he must. He does not want to think of a swollen river, but he must.

The last he saw of his comrades, Mairon was stooping over Jem’s corpse with his knife in his hand. What was left of Galway slumped beside her. Maedhros, being propelled forward by Gothmog, towards the waiting knot of men and horses, could do nothing.

The last he saw of Amrod, his brother was falling asleep.

Maedhros cannot weep properly, topsy-turvy and struggling to breathe, but his eyes are already blinking back the spatters of wet mud. That, and the dull wasp-swarm between his temples, bring stinging tears in time. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing even to risk the blow of a hoof if it means stemming the unwelcome tide of visions. 

(Knowing, too, that he can do nothing to stop any blow, splayed and helpless as he is. Gothmog must find some pleasure in presenting him like an animal ready for gutting.) 

( _Let it go_ , Gothmog said, when one of his men reported that Alexander had spooked and run. _If the beast is clever enough, perhaps it will tell his brothers something worth learning_.)

There is only one place they can be taking him.

The weight of blood rushed to his head is too much, and the upside-down world shutters dark again. 

 

He wakes at the press of a grimy hand over his nose and mouth, dragging him out of the depths of unconsciousness to panic and kick, desperate for air.  

Coarse laughter erupts nearby, and the hand pulls away, allowing him to choke in a breath. 

“A frightened rabbit,” the man scoffs. Maedhros does not recognize him from Utumno or anywhere else; he is not Gothmog. Gothmog is stalking the perimeter of the camp, massive arms folded over his chest. The whip at his belt is silver-handled, and silver turns red in the sunset light. 

Sunset? But it was early afternoon when— 

Maedhros chews the inside of his cheek, and tries to think of nothing. 

 _Amrod_ , beats his heart. _Amrod is dead_. Only he will not believe it, even though it is difficult to imagine horse falling without rider _—_ and almost impossible to imagine the rider surviving such a fall.

“You’ll eat.”

Maedhros must stay wary. Already, he has failed at that. He did not notice Gothmog approaching until he was looming overhead.

 _Athair is dead_ —that, he must believe.

He glares up at the man (the monster), wishing that a gaze alone could sear red pock-marked burns into the roughened skin, could gouge out the pig-like eyes. Maedhros has already promised to kill him; repeating the threat will only make him appear weak.

Gothmog stoops and runs a heavy hand through Maedhros’s matted hair. It is tangled with dried mud, and Gothmog is not particularly gentle. Maedhros’s scalp smarts.

“Don’t try and starve on my watch,” he says. “You’ll want strength where you’re going.”

“And you won’t mind forcing it down my throat?” He infuses his voice with as much as he can muster of Athair’s scathing pride.

Gothmog chuckles. “Still have a mouth on you, then? It’s alright, boy. You can blubber if you want to. You’ve lost a lot in such a little time.”

Maedhros’s hands are tied in front of him, tight enough that his fingers feel thick and stiff. He is given hardtack and boiled pork, the same as the rest of the men, and his stomach protests at the thought of it, but he knows that—

Not that Gothmog is _right_ , but that Maedhros must fight. And he will need strength for _that_.

(They aren’t going to kill him. Gothmog lost a man, protecting him from Mairon. They aren’t going to kill him, because they want him for something else.)

( _Bauglir_ , Maedhros realizes, _must be here_ . Athair didn’t know that—said that they couldn’t be _sure_ , while the tracks were yet unfinished. But Maedhros has feared the truth of it since he looked on the mountain wreathed in smoke.)

To distract his tongue and his throat and the fear digging in his gut, he casts a careful glance around him.

There are six men, which is less than he remembers, but perhaps others have been sent ahead on fresher horses, or perhaps they were left to contend with Mairon’s rage. 

Twice, now, Maedhros has had the chance to kill the fur-trapper.

Twice, now, he walks free.

Jem and Galway’s bodies, left to his mercy, are the latest prices paid for those mistakes.

_He’s mine, overseer. Mine._

Mairon wanted one more body, this one living, and Maedhros drops the last of his meat on the ground as his hands start up their hateful shaking once again.

A captive. That is what he is now—not a brother (failed), nor yet a son (also failed), but a captive. He could not even keep his comrades safe, hunters and fighters though they were.  

Maedhros stares at the raw rings that the shifting ropes have left on his wrists. 

It is enough work, at the moment—what with the ache in his head— _not_ to pray for death. Maedhros has not prayed since he shot seven men one after the other after the other, and that was almost a year ago, now. 

(Maybe if he had prayed, he would have been strong enough to go alone, leaving Jem and Galway safely back at Mithrim. Maybe if he had prayed, he would not have seen what he did in the bottom of the ravine. Maybe if he had prayed, Athair would have _listened_ —)

Heavy boots march into his line of vision, planted on the ground where he kneels. This time, at least, he is watchful.

“Supper’s over,” Gothmog says. “You’ve got another ride ahead of you. If you don’t struggle, it’ll save you a knock to the head.”

Maedhros considers. Gothmog’s eyes are too small for his face and his face is too small for the rest of him. None of this is important, but Maedhros needs something to focus on, since he is trying not to pray. 

“Well?” Gothmog reaches forward and twists Maedhros’s shirtfront in his hand, dragging him to his unsteady feet. Memories and thoughts are still coming slowly, and it is only then that Maedhros is aware—his coat is gone.

His coat and what is in it, his gun, and his knife.

“I’ll ride,” Maedhros says. This is not a concession; it is a decision to save his strength. Riding upright will be a sight better than—

But now he is thrust to his knees again and trussed in the same manner as before, his wrists fastened behind him and the bonds at his ankles drawn tight. Two men carry him, sling him over the back of the same packhorse, and strain his protesting limbs to connect his hands and feet. Maedhros cannot fight much against them, both larger than him, especially not with Gothmog following, his hand still squeezing firmly at Maedhros’s throat while the ropes are being pulled taut.

“There’s a good lad,” Gothmog says. He runs a hand over Maedhros’s ribs, where the shirt sticks with sweat and grime, and says, “Keep your supper down, if you can.”

Maedhros does his best, but it all comes to nothing when night has fallen and they halt beneath the frowning shadows of the foothills.

“The rest of you take the horses,” Gothmog orders. “We’ll walk him from here.”

He should fight back. (His head aches.) He should not fear that silver stained red. (His head aches.)

He should—but even when they cut the bonds at his ankles, he is too weak-limbed from the punishment of that ride. The muscles in his arms and legs are stretched and sore—his steps wobble. 

They climb into the rocky hills. He wonders how far they will let him see and feel his way, since Bauglir has chosen to covet secrecy. The answer is dictated by hours, and more pain—for with his hands behind him, he cannot catch himself on uneven terrain. 

When he falls, there is more laughter. 

Celegorm would bristle at that, would curse and claw, but Maedhros does not—

He swallows air. A gasp, to be exact. It is the first time he has allowed one of his living brother’s names to enter his mind, since—

Once begun he cannot end it, and he must think of Maglor, of Maglor’s hands pushing him away, demanding to know why he was not trusted.

Maglor hurts most—will always hurt most, because Maedhros is selfish when it comes to being loved—but there, too, are the little ones. Caranthir and Amras, holding one another, and Curufin looking not like a child at all, and as for Amrod—

He vomits. There is no one to hold him, to keep him from stumbling, to clean the vile crust of mud and bile away from his lips and chin. 

Gothmog halts, and sighs. “Told you,” he says loudly.  “A weak stomach won’t serve you.” He stalks back in the line, to where Maedhros retches on his knees. His hand seizes Maedhros’s shoulder. That is the hand that killed Athair. Maedhros slams his shoulder back against solid thigh, but it has no effect.

“Christ, you’re spiteful.” Gothmog slaps him hard enough across the face to send him reeling on his side, and then lifts him up again, uncorking his waterskin. “Drink,” he orders, and Maedhros, his cheek throbbing, drinks just enough to soothe the sharp soreness in his throat.

Gothmog tucks the waterskin away. “Alright then,” he murmurs, and silver glints as he—

(more blackness) 

 

Lanterns. Laughter. Maedhros opens his eyes, but they feel like they are full of sand. The pain in his head is like a splayed hand, its reach spreading to his neck and knotted shoulders.

“There you are again,” Gothmog says. He’s seated now, his booted ankles crossed, and from under the brim of his hat his eyes flicker in the half-light. They’re in some kind of guardhouse, Maedhros thinks. It seems dark enough that—if there are windows—it is still night.

(Night? In the mountains? From long ago, a flagging memory—a golden cousin’s voice—Maedhros _cannot_ drift there. He does not deserve it. He never will again.)

Maedhros opens his mouth and shuts it. His arms and legs are heavy and numb. There isn’t anything he can do like this. So much for saving strength, or saving anything.

“You’ll have an interview soon enough,” Gothmog says. “For now we’ll make you presentable. You look like hell, son.”

 _Son._ The word is white-hot against him, against his skin and his past. “Untie me and see how much hell I have in me,” Maedhros says.

“Without so much as a pocketknife? You must have some hidden strength in those slender hands, boasting like that.” Gothmog stands up and crosses the distance between them. Maedhros readies his stiff legs for a kick but Gothmog slips an arm behind Maedhros’s elbows and forces him to hobble along beside him before he can do it properly.

In the corner of the room is a water barrel.

“Ever seen a kitten drowned?” Gothmog chuckles, and Maedhros knows, _knows_ they’re not going to kill him, knows that Gothmog killed Athair but that he won’t kill him—

( _Why_ does he know that?)

—and yet none of this helps in the moment that his head is plunged under the water and held there, while Gothmog scrubs roughly at his matted hair and mud-caked neck.

Maedhros splutters and coughs when Gothmog releases him, and the sting of sharp lye soap floods his nostrils. The sound of jeering—the other men are still here, in shapes and shadows he does not care to see—floods his ears. He gulps a breath before Gothmog forces him down again.

( _If Amrod drowned…did it hurt?_ )

(If Amrod drowned, Maedhros hopes, quite terribly, that he was unconscious when he did. That he did not know— _this_ —)

“Good enough,” Gothmog mutters. Maedhros is shivering violently—it was very cold. Gothmog turns aside and when he turns back, his waterskin is offered again.

Maedhros does not want water, yet he drinks.

(Only, it does not taste like water.)

 

His mouth tastes like mud and sick and cotton. When he tries to open his eyes, the sand beneath their lids glows white, scraping awfully. He shudders and shuts them again. 

He cannot move, otherwise. 

“Peaceful,” sounds a voice around him— _all_ around him, as if it worms its way deep into his ears, burrowing and seeking. “You looked almost peaceful, as you slept.” 

Maedhros is a coward, and much worse than that. Yet even a coward can force his eyes open; it is not so great a gesture, even if the effort feels enormous.

He opens his eyes to a skull. 

His lips sting as he bites them, but it is all he can do to keep from crying out. This seems too simple to be hell; he must be alive. He must. Whatever was in the water didn’t kill him.

(They’re not going to kill him.)

The skull moves aside. Maedhros can see, now, that it is being held in great white hands with moon-sick nails. 

The crawling fear that pain chased away on his journey begins at the base of his spine and climbs its way slowly, surely, up. He is almost too afraid to remember his grief.

“Do you know,” Melkor Bauglir murmurs, with a wax-dripped smile candled through his even teeth, “I almost wonder if I should have waited to...prepare him. It is no small privilege to be entertaining the eldest son before the father’s body is cold in the ground.” 

Maedhros does not answer, but Melkor must perceive the confusion in his eyes.

“This,” Melkor explains, lambswool soft, “Is your father’s head.” 

This is not his father. 

There is not much else he knows, thanks to the dull agony swimming through him, the blur at the corners of his vision. He knows that he is bound to the heavy chair at neck and waist, wrists and ankles, but he has no memory of how he came to be here, of who fastened the straps in place. He does not think he struggled, this time. He does not think he was even awake yet when it happened. In Beleriand, he woke feeling much the same—only this is worse, thanks to the blows to the back of his skull, the long ride, the longer climb. 

 _Skull._ And here he is again, wheeling back, back to the light of what can only be morning, back to the lie, back to the gaping sockets, and he blinks _hard_ , to shake the blur away. He knows this, at least, and above all:  

That _thing_  is not his father. 

He thought he was keeping his mouth shut tightly, tight enough to grind his teeth against each other, but he must have said something aloud, because Bauglir laughs. 

“We are barely acquainted, my boy, and already you would call me a liar?” One pale hand—and terribly, they are beautiful hands, too large but well-articulated, with fingers long enough to droop and claw at the crevices in not-Athair’s-skull— _twitches_ , but it is the other that comes to rest along Maedhros’s cheek before he even saw it move. 

“You _burn_.” He speaks in a purr. A great, loathsome creature, purring. “I can feel the heat in your skin. Why is that? Are you angry?” 

 _Angry?_ With Athair in the ground and Amrod in the river, with his brothers all alone?

Maedhros blinks. He must not panic here, must not fight until it will do some good. The hand against his face is cool. He locks his jaw tightly, even as a speculative finger tugs at the corner of his mouth. 

“Not even a smile? Not even a threat of bared teeth? Very well.” Bauglir turns half away, and he lifts the skull in his hands, holding it at eye-level. The windows behind him are very bright, and Bauglir—in his black coat and black stock and black trousers—is a splash of emptiness against the light. 

It must be midday, which means he has lost so much time. Maedhros finds himself blinking once more and wishes that he would not. He must not appear to be keeping back tears. 

 _You trained for this_. 

He wishes, too, that he could trust his teeth not to chatter, but as it is, he dares not relieve them from their clenched hold. 

“He does not recognize you, Feanor,” Bauglir murmurs, and he noses forward so that his forehead rests against the bone-plated brow. That is not Athair, but Maedhros still feels sorry for whoever it is, that they should suffer such an indignity. 

 _Not Athair, not Athair._ Athair’s soul is gone and his body safe. Maedhros left him in Maglor’s keeping, and Maglor— _Curufin_ —would not breach such a charge. 

Even the thought of their names is enough to cut him down. He quickly turns his focus to the tightness of the leather straps instead, to the pain. Pain, after all, has its uses—to outline his body, to shut away his mind. 

“They dug deep,” Bauglir muses. “But the ground was still soft when my men turned it over. Far in Rumil’s fields, was it not? Far away, and all alone, as Feanor also lived.  I would rather have had him living, you know, but now I find myself content. The body of the father and the body of the son. Life and death are only matters of further study.” 

He knows too much about the grave. Still, Maedhros will not believe him.

“You lie,” Maedhros says, and he  _does_  mean to speak this time. “You were afraid of my father, and now you mock him when he is safely gone.” 

“And you are safely here, trussed for slaughter…or for something more delicate.” Melkor sets down the skull on his desk, clattering the rows of teeth, and bends over Maedhros so that Maedhros’s eyes are level with the diamond pinned to his chest. 

 _Athair’s diamond. Grandfather’s diamond._   

Maedhros last saw it a year ago, in Gothmog’s hateful hand. In some ways, that was where it all began.

(He would shut his eyes, if that were not a sign of weakness.)

He stares straight ahead, trying to see the gem alone and not the fiend who took it, trying to imagine Athair’s hands shaping it with precision rather than gentleness, as he tended to all things. Grandfather Finwe must have cherished it more for Athair’s care in its crafting than for its brilliance. 

Such was his way. 

He breathes sharply through his nose when his head is snapped back, Melkor’s thick iron fingers snagged brutally in his hair. 

“Have I bored you?” 

“You have disgusted me.” 

Melkor does not let go until Maedhros’s eyes have watered against his will, though he makes no sound. Then Melkor frees his hand and returns to his desk. 

“You seem loath to believe me, and your father would doubtless be ashamed.” If the pain inflicted was a sign of anger, the anger is gone now, and amusement has taken its place. Melkor— _no, call him Morgoth,_ Athair commands in Maedhros’s mind, and Maedhros has always done his best to obey Athair in spirit as well as in letter, and in death, now, as well as in life—sorts through a drawer in his desk. 

 _Do not_ , Athair orders, _show your fear_.

But Maedhros has been afraid for almost half his life, of this.

“I believe,” Morgoth observes, hiding something in his palm, “That your father might expect recognition of his form. The curve of that cheekbone is what yours would be, if I stripped away your flesh. The rudiments of shape—but that we shall discover soon enough. Still, if you refuse to see your father in his bones, then—” and he does not finish the sentence because he does not need to, because he opens his palm and it is— 

It is— 

(He has worked that ring off Athair’s finger a dozen times, asked him its story a dozen more, known the intricacy of the knots, copied from one of Grandmother Miriel’s designs, _oh,_  he knows the weight of that ring, knows the warmth it bears that is really Athair’s warmth—) 

Morgoth slips it on his finger—the left ring finger—and holds it up to the light. He smiles, and Maedhros is sure his teeth are cracking in his mouth, for he wants to weep and still he knows that he cannot. 

He cannot, even though that is Athair’s ring. 

Even though that—that  _thing_ —is Athair. 

He has grown used to swallowing sobs already. Here is another that does not make it past his lips, and yet it feels like no triumph at all. 

“He made metal almost as beautiful as he made his sons,” Morgoth murmurs. “Now, do you recognize him? Such a grin, without any skin to cover those desperate teeth.” 

Maedhros is weak, and so he shuts his eyes. 

Of course, this only means again that he does not see the hand before it touches him—this time, made colder by the kiss of metal against his jaw, lifting his face. 

“Well now,” Morgoth says, soft and savoring, “Does that not feel like your father’s hand?” 

The sounds leaves him before he can stop it. It is a sound that a dog might make when kicked, and he is sure that Morgoth would agree, should he hear it so described. 

“You poor child,” Morgoth says. “Playing so hard at being a man, only to whimper at the sight of an old wedding band.” 

Dogs can do more than whimper, Maedhros thinks, and he sinks his teeth into the flesh between finger and thumb. 

It is a short-lived victory. The blow comes this time to the side of his head, a sharp snap that sends him spinning back to the new-awakened, throbbing aches from Gothmog’s whip. 

When he blinks to straight sight again, Morgoth is staring down at the oozing wound with wide and eager eyes.  

As if he has never seen blood before. 

(Maybe he has never seen his own.) 

“My dear boy,” he says, in very solemn reflection, “I believe you shall regret that.”  

 _Never_ , Maedhros spits inwardly, but he will not sate the monster with the satisfaction of more words. He forces himself not to gag at the taste of foul blood. 

Someone thumps at the door outside. Morgoth is still looking at his hand, turning it from side to side with that queer glint in his eyes, and he does not answer until the knock comes thrice. 

“Come in,” he calls at last, and the door opens somewhere behind Maedhros, but he cannot see who enters. He jolts a little against the straps when cold fingers lace through his hair. It is a gentler touch, but no kinder than Morgoth’s hold, and Maedhros’s head is steadily tugged back until he meets the turned-down gaze of the woman he met only once, but cannot forget.  

“I have missed you,” she says, running her tongue along the edge of her teeth. She slips one hand from his hair down the side of his neck, past the leather collar the binds him, undoing the sweat-stiff kerchief knotted beneath. With seeking fingertips, she prods along his throat until she finds the mark she left on him for life. 

Maedhros can do nothing.

(He gave himself up, for Athair. To this woman and so many others. And if Athair is dead—if Athair is ruined, a gleaming thing in someone else’s hands, what did any of it _matter_? What was any of it for?)

“Bauglir,” she asks sweetly, and she lets Maedhros’s head drop, though her nails still graze the scarred skin, “Have you seen it?” 

“Your work?” One of Morgoth’s vast black brows glides lazily upwards. “Indeed, I have. You and I have both learned how tractable he is in his sleep. And when I have him stripped for inspection, I shall see all.” 

She stoops, speaking with her lips against Maedhros’s ear. “Leave enough pieces of him for me.” 

Maedhros knows exactly what she means. When the time comes, he will deserve it. He will deserve _that_.

“Mairon, my dear.” Morgoth chuckles. “You need not glower at the door. Come in! Gothmog tells me you nearly killed him.” 

“I nearly killed all of them,” Mairon snaps, and Maedhros heard that voice first in moonlight, and after in his dreams, and today he could have silenced it forever, if he had only been quicker with the knife. “They took something that is mine.” 

Morgoth leans against his desk, his hands—hurt and unhurt—nestling around its heavy edge, his coattails flung out upon the surface. One brushes against the jaw of— 

Maedhros swallows. 

“Often have I reminded you to be patient,” Morgoth observes, smiling, “And often have you forgotten it. Do you covet our fair guest?” He nods at Zella. “You would not be the only one. Thuringwethil has already tasted him.” 

Mairon steps into view. He does not wear his furs this morning, and is slight and long without them. He is clad instead in fine-tooled leather, and felted black cloth. His hair is braided at one temple, combed smooth across the other shoulder.

His eyes, as always, are like a tiger’s eyes. 

(Maedhros saw a tiger once, long ago, in a past life where the city was home to strange wonders, traveling circuses, and the like.)

(The tiger, conveniently, was on the far side of iron bars.) 

“I’ll taste his flesh,” Mairon says coldly, “When I flay it off him.”  

Morgoth’s smile turns indulgent. “There are rules,” he says. “But you know this, and we will not quarrel before a guest. Not the son of Feanor!” He throws back his head in laughter that seems unending, and his right hand covers Athair’s bare white pate like a grasping, fleshy spider. 

Maybe, Maedhros thinks, he can find a way to _make_ them kill him quickly. 

Thuringwethil’s mouth creeps over his temple, tongue darting out to wet his skin, and he winces. 

“Not so eager this time?” she whispers. “I remember you differently.” Then she stoops, and her mouth is on his mouth, and Maedhros _fights_ , but it is not fighting when there is nothing he can do.

Morgoth is still laughing, and Maedhros’s eyes are shut tightly, and finally, _finally_ , Thuringwethil frees him from her gnawing lips.

“What a display,” Morgoth murmurs. “Leave off, my dear. Leave off. You will become distracted—or poor Mairon will.”

Across the room, Mairon growls.

“I called you both here for a reason,” Morgoth explains, his voice still shimmering with mirth. He commands even Thuringwethil, with that shimmer. “He has brothers. Less than he did, Gothmog tells me, but still. Brothers.”

_Less than he did._

What Maedhros deserves, and what Maedhros knows—together, it is too much. In an afterlife, he can never be at Athair’s side, at Amrod’s side, and yet—

Maedhros fixes his eyes on Mairon’s. Mairon is the likeliest to kill him—the knife at his belt is deadly sharp, and would finish him in a moment, if the man is made angry enough.

Mairon watches him, unblinking. His lips are tight and bloodless. He seems angry enough.

(Maedhros tempts him as he tempts fate.) 

“Do you have a message for your brothers?” Morgoth asks, the undercurrent of warning rising, and the conversation turns again, spinning like a top. Morgoth must dislike the loss of his captive’s attention. “For I do. There are terms by which they may free you. Terms by which you might be released with no harm to a single copper hair on your head. I promise.” 

Thuringwethil comes close again, and knits her fingers through his hair.

Maedhros smiles, hoping that some blood still sticks to his teeth, that it may be seen. The filth of her touch must not keep him from this. Must not shame him into a state of fear. Not if he wants to accomplish life or death, or anything. “I find that hard to believe.” 

“A show of strength!” Morgoth cries, delighted. He lifts his oozing hand. “Do you see, my friends? The little prince has already tested his mettle against me.” 

“He bit you?” Thuringwethil’s hands, which have not ceased roving, not only in his hair but also over the scar at his throat, still and clench. “I hope you do not blame my teaching.” 

“He spilled your blood,” Mairon hisses, and his hand  _does_  stray to his knife now, as if _this_ will drive him mad at last, and Maedhros does not pray but he  _is_ grateful— 

“Control your temper,” Morgoth orders, his voice drained of humor and gone ice-hard. “Or I shall control it for you.” His smile returns, though the tension does not ease. “We negotiate first, like gentleman. Before he was a gory-handed outlaw—before he was Thuringwethil’s slut—he was, you understand, a gentleman.” 

Thuringwethil laughs, high and triumphant. Mairon is silent. 

 _I am sorry_ , Maedhros whispers in his mind, and it might be and is directed to Athair’s spirit, but also to his brothers—those who live and the one who might not—and to his comrades, who now rot in the ruins of blood and hope.

“I keep a little ledger of his sins,” Morgoth says, tilting his head but holding Maedhros’s eyes in his unwavering stare. “They shall be repaid, in time. First, we must see how willing is young— _Maglor_ , is it? The musician. We shall see what tune he sings when he learns that not only is his father dead and buried, not only is the little twin washed away, but his beloved hero is as good as dead also.” He frowns, almost regretfully. “For he does love you, does he not? Your Macalaure? So, I hear, your mother used to call him.” 

Maedhros’s jaw aches. If only this were a poisoned dream—a vision of madness. Not a future. Not his present.

“He can save you,” Morgoth murmurs. His voice still fills the room. “He need only give me what I ask—no more brothers. No more of your family’s blood. Do you not think that any other term would be agreeable?” He lifts the wound on his hand to his mouth, staining the pale lips red. “You could be free within the day.” 

This, of all things, lightens Mairon’s dark mood, and he smiles as Morgoth  smiles—all teeth. He stalks closer, closer, encroaching on what he must deem only to be prey, and then he turns so that Maedhros can see what dangles at his belt.

Swatches of hair, no longer than a hand’s width. One dark, one light, with bloodied flesh still clinging to the roots.

Mairon’s smile widens.

Maedhros grits his teeth.

 _They were already dead_ , he tries to tell himself, a trembling reassurance that does not rise to the height of comfort. _They felt no more pain._

Morgoth stands at his desk. He sorts about amid the neat piles of books, the rolled maps. At last he shuffles out a sheaf of rippling ivory paper, and tests a fountain pen. 

“To Maglor, next son of Feanor, my warmest greetings,” he says aloud, dragging the pen along the page. “How warm shall those greetings be? What token shall we return to him, that he may know how closely we hold his brother’s interests?” 

Thuringwethil steps away, and returns to Maedhros’s sight, carrying something in her arms. It is his coat.

Maedhros had allowed himself to miss it. Now he wishes it was gone forever.

“I searched the pockets once,” Thuringwethil says. There is a triumphant flicker in her eyes. “He kept his secrets in them, then. Let us see what he keeps there now.” 

She turns the coat inside out, and Maedhros does not pray, but he hopes she does not find— 

It falls to the floor with the faintest clink of metal.

“My, my,” Morgoth gloats, when Thuringwethil has brought it to him. “This from the inner pocket—rather near the heart?” 

“What is it?” Mairon asks. 

“The winged defender,” Morgoth says, dangling the medal from his thumb. “Saint Michael.” 

Maedhros tastes blood, but this time, it is his own. 

“The saints would have little use for you, boy. Is there any commandment you have not broken, in your pursuit of your father’s love? But then. I understand. Fathers are fickle creatures—never more than the one we pretend to love above us.” He sweeps his wounded hand outward. “Were you to look behind you—nay, I know. You cannot so much as turn—you would see that every chamber of my home in these hills is bedecked with your angels. Some even have your glorious hair, and those storm-clear eyes.” He sets the medal down carefully upon the dark-polished surface of his desk. “Art and science are so alike,” he says. “Thus, I can marvel at the beauty of your eyes, whether they are in your head or out of it.” 

 _Forgive me_ , Maedhros begs, to the flash of Mother in his mind—Mother, who sketched the saint she trusted to protect her ruined eldest. Mother lives (she must) and so it is not a prayer. 

(He ought not even to think of her.)

(He ought not—)

“Shall you send the trinket to his brother?” Thuringwethil asks. 

“No,” Morgoth answers. “This I shall keep, for an altar of my own.” 

“Good.” She has left Maedhros at last, and she winds a dark curl of her own around her finger. “If it _is_ a token you have in mind, I have a better idea.” 

“Name it!” His eyes twinkle, fire on black glass. 

Maedhros hopes that Maglor bars the doors of Fort Mithrim.

Maedhros ought to hope that Maglor will forget him.

Thuringwethil, intent on some new plan, prowls close to Mairon, as one cat would to another. With the palm of her right hand, she caresses his chest, drawing her hand down until she reaches his belt. Maedhros watches Mairon, but sees no change in his still face. 

(Maedhros should have killed him.)

Thuringwethil lifts Mairon’s knife free.  

(They will not kill _him_ yet, but that does not mean he does not wish it.)

Back she crosses to Maedhros, so close that she steps between his knees. Her claws twist the hair above his ear, and the knife flashes close to his eye as she passes it swiftly through the hank she stretches straight. 

Maedhros blinks hard.

“There,” she says, stroking it like a ribbon. It is tangled but still bright, thanks to Gothmog’s rough washing. “A few strands harmed, but it makes for a pretty prize. Send copper to them, Bauglir. Full payment upon the acceptance of your terms.” 

Morgoth laughs again. Maedhros hates the sound with the same sick fascination one has in swallowing against an inflamed throat—the thing will be repeated, and will hurt each time. 

“I saw you flinch, my lad,” he says. “Over a lock of hair! Well, hold to your vanity while you can. Perhaps Maglor will act quick enough to save that, too.” 

Maedhros speaks through his teeth. “Take from me what you will. My brothers will not treat with you.” 

Morgoth sighs. It is worse than his laugh; it reeks of false sympathy. “And yet,” he says, “Though you try to hide it, I know how much you want them to.” 

Maedhros keeps his mouth shut, for no good can come of speaking further. He is a coward, and he fears he shall become something much worse than that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read #82, RECONNAISSANCE, next:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/18825313


	2. of the high and distant mountains

_“That foul villain is locked away at last,”_ Athair said, and smiled as he said it, though to Maedhros he looked drawn too tight—one of Maglor’s stringed instruments, ready for bursting. _“Now we are safe. We are, all of us, safe. I thought I should never see the day.”_

And Maedhros thought (hoped) he would never see the day that he was sent away. Surely not now, not with a lump in his throat, not with a voice still in some danger of splitting, _not yet a man at all, even though he must be._  Yet here they were: he and Maglor set to leave on the morrow.

 _“That villain?”_ he asked, because Athair would not wish, surely, to hear his complaints. His fears. Not after Athair had fought so hard for Maedhros to go at all.

 _“Bauglir,”_ Athair sneered, and Maedhros swallowed air, shaken as he always was, by the memory of flint-cut eyes and teeth and _hands_ — 

 

The cell around him is dark.

He should sleep while he can—but when he is not pummeled by the blows of past conversation, he spends the long dark hours staring at his fingers, the nails and the knuckles.

(Maedhros wonders how long he shall be allowed to keep them.)

He should count his teeth, too, he supposes. And he should count the minutes—the hours—in which he remains unscathed. If he shuts his eyes, he can see the silver handle of Gothmog’s whip, blinding at his belt, hard in his hand. Maedhros has never been whipped, and he can scarcely imagine the pain of it with any hope of accuracy.

 _Think of_ —of skin laid open, even down to the bone.

Worse, to him, is the thought of scarring. It must be only a matter of time until his back is striped like a slave’s, until his neck is collared like Rumil’s, until, until, until.

Back to counting teeth again. He shudders. His tongue and lips are sore and swollen. He needs water, and he needs food.

Oh, God. Bauglir _must_ want information, which means that Maedhros will keep his tongue—won’t he?

Perhaps it is only because he is aching with exhaustion. Perhaps it is because he is, in some ways, still very young. Whatever it is, the shudder that runs through him is more violent, this time, and he sways where he sits, too sickened to continue the morbid game of guesses. Instead, he moves his trembling hands to his hair, tugging at the roots just hard enough that he cannot even pretend it is his mother’s touch. The rough-shorn patch at his temple feels like the hide of an animal. Maedhros remembers the nearness of the knife, and the smile that followed it.

They will take all of him very slowly, before they reach his bones. 

He knows that now. 

They will take all, unless Maglor  _gives_  all. 

Unless Maglor— 

There is no one else in the pitchy cell, and so he whispers _please, please._ This, only to Maglor, who cannot see him. Maglor, who would cry and sing and pace the floor if he were here.

 _Maglor_ —Maedhros drags his hands from his hair to grind the heels of his palms against his eyes. In the blur of hunger and thirst and the memory of blood and Athair gone, blood and Amrod gone, blood and his brothers and his friends, all gone...each thought is but a crumbling foothold in a blank-faced cliff.

There is a ring sunken in the rock wall, to which a hand might be cuffed, but the bonds at his wrists were cut as soon as he was across the threshold. Mairon took the ropes with him. No doubt Bauglir did not want the prisoner hanging himself. Maedhros rubs the tender skin of his wrists, where it is scraped red, and curses himself anew for not killing Mairon as soon as he came close.

But it wasn't evenly matched, or near evenly matched. Maedhros was blindfolded before the leather straps were loosened from his arms, and then his hands were bound with a knife caressing his throat—Mairon’s knife. When Maedhros was marched down the long, mountain-cold corridor, it was Mairon’s hot breath against his ear, Mairon’s crushing grip on his cinched wrists. When they came to the cell at last, the man needed no knife. He forced Maedhros to kneel on the rock-hewn floor, and when he freed Maedhros’s hands, he dug his talon-fingers against the bruise at the back of Maedhros's head.

That—a blinding, sickening distraction—kept him slumped and weak, biting back what groans he could. Then, too, his ankles are still shackled together. Maedhros counts the links of chain (something else to count) and knows that he had range neither to kick nor to run.

The odds have been against him since Gothmog sent him sprawling in the mud. Anyone could see that, _would_ see that, except Athair.

Of course, only Athair’s opinion matters now.

(That is because he is dead.)

Maedhros tries to see his face. The mobile mouth and piercing eyes, the furrow that pinched between his brows when he was thinking. But Athair's gaze, Athair's touch, Athair's voice—they have all been gouged out and replaced.

“ _Tell me what you hear of him,_ ” Athair said, that night when Maedhros did not want to be a man, wanted to lie with his head on Mother’s lap, crying and being held, so that he might forget that he was being sent away. He _had_ cried, when Athair first decreed that Maedhros was to live in the city. He had cried bitterly. The time for that was over. _“Tell me every word of gossip. We will not let him slip away from justice, this time.”_

It was another duty, a duty that drove Maedhros’s teeth against his lip. He didn’t want to listen for news of Melkor, Melkor who had touched his face as if it wasn’t a face at all.

And now Athair’s face is not a face at all, and Maedhros is but a pretty plaything in the hands of a monster who somehow knows every one of his tricks.

Maedhros rests his arms on his knees, and buries his face there, and although Morgoth may have some means of watching, of knowing this, too, he can hold back the tears no longer.

The sobs shake him until his breath rattles uneasily in his lungs. He coughs and wipes his eyes on his sleeve, knowing that he must stop, most restore some appearance of calm. And yet—instead, he rifles through years past in frantic fits, trying to see anything but the skull.

“ _Y_ _ou are my eldest, my heir,”_ Athair was fond of saying. _“I am depending on you.”_

 _“And I on you,”_ Maedhros could have cried, before he lost the right to demand it, if it _was_ a right he ever had. When had Athair ever expected—ever _dreamed_ —that his heir would go on to squander opportunity and righteous responsibility with weak sin after weak sin?

(Indis knew. It is strange to think of Indis, in this ugly place, with her soft silk skirts and netted gloves, but she appears like a warning specter all the same. Maedhros learned to recognize the way that her mouth tightened at one corner whenever he had...slipped.)

(He wondered if she watched over Grandfather Finwe’s decanters, seeing how much had been drunk down. He stopped depending on that stock, after a while.)

( _I am depending on you._ )

A breath. Another breath. Mairon has not returned, with his knife and his hungry eyes. As for Thuringwethil—she is gone, too, with a handful of his hair in her fist.

_Maglor, please._

Maedhros knows what he deserves, has given much thought to it, in fact, and he knows that he must ready himself for that ultimate shame. She will not give him the grace of unconsciousness a second time.

_Tractable...you and I have both learned how tractable he is in his sleep..._

_Don’t,_ he warns himself. _Don’t even try to remember, to imagine, to guess._  It is a lesson that suits both ends, for he decides that he will only be driven mad if he thinks of Thuringwethil’s claws and teeth scraping him to the soul.

He must use his energies elsewhere. He must think of a plan.

_This is your father’s head._

He covers his mouth in his hands, though there is nothing left in his stomach to toss up, and he forces himself to look around the cell. It accomplishes nothing; there is no light. No windows, no sound of water running near enough that he might hope to find a tunnel. He inspects the shackles at his ankles with his fingertips, but they are forged of heavy iron. He cannot break them free or slip them off.

_There is no plan._

_What are we going to do now?_

Bright, eager, Fing—he _chokes_ , and reels, and no, no. He cannot. He cannot think of _him_ , just as he cannot think of his mother, just as he (long ago) forced away any thought or memory of his first (his only) love. There are doors Maedhros must close if he is to walk through any others.

He trembles a little, quavers against that cruel absolute. It is one he only ever accomplished by the burning of bridges, by burying hooks into his soul.

_I’ll skin you for that._

If he cannot escape from here, he must wait. He must wait until Mairon comes again, and fight so fiercely this time that he manages to claim either victory or death.

Of the two, death seems more bearable.

In the hollow of fear and shadow, there are few certainties. One is that Mairon hates him without being amused by him—and _that_ is the kind of hatred that will kill.  

In some other world—a world where Maedhros had occasionally ducked a fist over the matter of a lady’s hand—he might have called this jealousy. But the paltry parlor examples that the east offers flake apart like ash here. There are no words for this, except the very ugliest—for what he has become, for what he will pay hereafter. 

_if Maglor will not take their terms, take Mairon’s._

He did not struggle in Mairon’s hold. (Maglor struggled in his.)

There is such a thing as a losing fight.

Athair would tell him to keep trying, despite this or anything, but Athair is dead, head severed from his body, flesh and eyes emptied out like offal. Maedhros has seen the way an animal head is treated if the skull is to be revealed; he has smelled the foul grease and boiling hair, seen the hunks of lifeless flesh peeled away. 

He comes from a family of hunters, after all. 

Athair would tell him to fight. 

(Death, victory, and Athair.)

A different Maedhros, long ago, said, _we do what we must_.

Maedhros wants death. Maedhros tells himself he will fight, when the time is right.

More hours. More breathing. More counting. He cannot be sure when night changes to day, exactly, or if that is the way time is even turning, but occasionally, he hears boots far-off, and a little light (a very little light) trickles in.

By it, Maedhros can learn the walls of his cell. They are cragged and shale-rough. Maedhros remembers the powder blast, ringing that day in free air, and wonders if it was here that the earth broke deepest.

How swiftly they built this place! How swiftly his father fell.  

Smoke he saw, crash he heard—both from miles away. He had not seen the future, then. He never really does, at least, not enough.

 _“Your grandmother had foresight,”_ Athair told him once. It was so rarely that he spoke of elfin Miriel that Maedhros fell silent, eyes wide and ears open, holding fast to every look and word. _“And you have her features, I think.”_

(Then he kissed Maedhros’s brow.)

Maedhros presses his knuckles against his lips. _Your last night whole_ , he scolds himself, _and you waste it thus—with questions and answers and hurts that cannot help you._  

 _Whole?_  

If Thuringwethil’s groping hands were not reminder enough—if Mairon’s heat-bleeding stare was not reminder enough—if the sight of his father’s death’s-head and the rain-choked river and the bodies of Galway and Jem were not enough— 

Is it not obvious? Maedhros has never been whole. 

He was given the promise of wholeness, once, by a baptism he no longer ought to believe in. He was given the promise of purity, and of salvation, and of _friendship—_ for which he cared more than anything—and all these he threw away. His face is a painted doll’s face, china-thin and soon destroyed, and Thuringwethil’s gloating, Mairon’s brutality, Morgoth’s tantalized cruelty is no more than he earned for himself.

 _Anything._  

He told Thuringwethil, once, that he would give her anything. 

He expects the promise to be collected thrice over in the endless, knowing horror of this place. 

 

Food and water—both suspiciously clean, if bland—are passed through to him by unseen hands. His stomach roils, long-empty, and his mouth is sand-parched, but he cannot trust what they give him. Not after Gothmog’s trickery. Not while he waits. 

At least the years have taught him how to starve.

It may be day, or yet another night—Maedhros has failed to think clearly enough to count time, but by yawning thirst—when the door of his cell opens. The men who enter are thick-armed and heavy-handed. They haul him to his feet, and because there are four of them, he does not protest when they fasten manacles around his wrists, connecting them to his linked ankles by a length of chain. 

Thus hobbled, he is led out and upwards, climbing less a stair and more an incline, until he realizes that they are indeed in an unfinished portion of Bauglir’s stronghold. Whatever plans Bauglir— _Morgoth_ —has for the establishment of a chalet and fortress in one, they are woefully incomplete. Athair’s voice rings in Maedhros’s ears, suggesting every crevice and cranny that can be perceived as a weak point. Maedhros does his best to count the imperfections he can see, by dim lantern-light, but  _unfinished_ has never presented the same opening to him as it did to Athair. 

He is not his father, and led like a sheep to slaughter, he does not even feel like his father’s son.  

 _“Sometimes,”_ Mother murmurs, and he pushes her away quickly, for it is not safe for her to be here, but still he hears the snatches of other words: _“I think he will be the ruin of us all.”_

They do not pass above ground. Instead, they finally reach a door, heavy and iron-bound around its edges, and through it they come upon even-laid stone steps. 

Maedhros could push one of his guards down those steps—and maybe fall atop another. But that would leave two more, and he would have no guarantee of wresting the key for his shackles away, certainly not weak and weary as he is. 

The stairs end at another door. In his dreams, sometimes, he was trapped amid dark halls, dark series of steps, never seeing light or hearkening to his brothers’ voices. 

His dreams, these days, come true. 

(How much else. How much of Athair’s voice and Athair’s hands lied to him in dim-painted sleep? What use is it, to have foresight, if the future laughs in your face?

_Does that not feel like your father’s hand?_

Behind this door is a hall, shadowed for its length and lit by windows at the far end. Belatedly, the men grumble among themselves—

“When were we meaning to—” 

“Damn you, if you don’t tell, I won’t!” 

 _See?_ There is Athair’s voice again.  _Already, they make mistakes. They have shown you too much._  

It would be easier to listen, if Athair’s voice did not now float through the tombstone-gapped teeth of a leering skull. 

(It is difficult to see anything, in the blur of second sight—

He tries for the furrow in the brow, for the bright eyes, but even they are gone. He cannot remember his father’s face.)

He panics—nothing more visible than a sudden tremor through his shoulders, but it is enough, and he has lost yet another moment, and now the blindfold slips over his eyes again, and a rough elbow to his spine propels him forward, tripping and lurching in his chains. 

“Let him see!” 

That is Morgoth’s voice, layered like snakeskin, and Maedhros’s faint hope that his vision was an advantage is shaken away. He is easily made a fool of, here. He must not forget that. 

The band of cloth is torn aside, and along the hall Maedhros sees that the man himself strides silently—all shoulders and a long white face. If it has been days—Maedhros’s stomach says two—since their last meeting, he is unchanged even in expression.

The sort of devil that can find the frightened child behind the eyes of anyone. 

“Our emissary has not yet returned,” Morgoth says, waving a hand. Maedhros looks, against his will, and sees that he still wears Athair’s ring. “And until such time as she does, we treat him as an honored guest. Have you eaten?” 

“Of your poison?” Maedhros retorts. Even his voice sounds parched. “I have not.” 

“If I wished to poison you,” Morgoth says, coming close enough that every tooth in his indulgent smile can be clearly picked out, like meat from a bone, “I should hold you down and force it past your lips. You are familiar with the process, no? Sometimes it is not even a matter of force.” His eyes glint, and Maedhros feels heat rising in his cheeks.  

Morgoth waves away the men who escorted him aboveground and settles one hand at the back of Maedhros’s neck and the other on his arm.

(He has—dreamed—of this—)

Morgoth is more densely strong even than his towering build suggests, and Maedhros, suppressing his feverish panting as best he can, decides that to contest such a focused grip would be futile.

“I told you of my fondness for angels,” Morgoth mouths against his ear. They are almost the same height; Maedhros  _must_ _not_ feel like a child beside him. “See how I keep them captured here?” 

His fingers, clammy against Maedhros’s neck and long enough to graze the far side of his jaw, turn his face this way and that. 

Athair’s hand and wisdom, Athair’s path and duty, and all of it is tangled in this aching, twisting shame.

Farther back, too, he has been here before.

( _What a handsome child_ , and he is thirteen, and he cries into his pillow that night with rage and _fear._ )

“There is a Titian,” Morgoth says. “The name I would give to the color of your hair, my boy.” He tugs a few strands of it demonstratively. Maedhros sees, though he does not wish to, that there are paintings hanging on the long walls—as delicate and profound as those in the glossy plates Mother collected, long ago.

“I have tried to make angels of my own,” Morgoth muses. “But with little luck. I hang my trophies nonetheless, for they please me.” He gestures now to a splayed set of wings—too wide to be any but those of an eagle or some other great bird of prey. There is something dreadful about wings with no bird between them; something more dreadful still, to think of the maimed creatures who sacrificed their beauty and freedom all at once. 

“Oh, how your pulse flutters, Maitimo,” Morgoth murmurs, his index finger digging deep in the hollow of Maedhros’s throat. The right side, and thus not the side of Thuringwethil’s teethmarks, but Maedhros must strain not to cringe anyway. They are halfway down the hall now, and Maedhros would cast him off, would throw his whole weight against him, but _where would he go_? 

“If you dislike how my heart beats,” Maedhros says flatly, around his thirst-thick tongue, “Put an end to its beating.” 

“Is this the famous Feanorian wit?”  Morgoth chuckles. Still, they walk. Side-by-side, and Maedhros hates himself the more for it, but surely, it is not yet the right time to struggle. “Believe me, when it is time for you to beg on your hands and knees, I will exact it. But for now, we have much to talk of—as host and guest. Need I remind you again?” 

_Do not think of them. Not even of Athair. You must not._

_(He will be able to see.)_

And like this, they reach the end of the hall, and the windows that Maedhros  saw from afar are doors, and the doors open onto the stone shelf rimmed by an iron railing, the posts drilled through the surface of the ledge. 

Here is beauty, where it would be easier to long for none. The sky is washed in gold by the sun’s rise, and the mountains undulate like waves, and somewhere in that free and wild land is his father’s spoiled grave, and somewhere pacing whatever floor he finds beneath his feet is Maglor, and— 

 _Do not think of them_ , he pleads with himself once more, but this is the same world, and his heart continues to beat in it because they will not give him death.

The wind whips through Maedhros’s hair, and stings his eyes, and he bows his head for just a moment, that the tears he thought he quelled in the hours past may fall unseen. 

Morgoth does not seem to raise his voice, yet Maedhros can hear him well above the wind. 

“I shall speak frankly to you,” Morgoth says. He drops his hand from Maedhros’s neck and stands a little in front of him, one hand toying with the watch chain in his vest pocket. Even the nails of his hands are too pale, as if no blood flows to his fingertips. Maedhros would rather not think of watch chains, and he has no time to, for Morgoth says, then, “Thuringwethil has not returned.” 

Maedhros makes no answer, and Morgoth smiles with one side of his long-sliced mouth. 

“She has never been late when I expect her,” he says. “I have made no decree, but Mairon has followed her. I think Mairon shall find her, since hunting and trapping is his specialty—and I think he shall find her dead.” 

Maedhros is a fool—has he not known this in less desperate circumstances than these?—and so it takes him a moment to understand what this means, beyond a cold-water wave of shamefaced relief.

“If your brothers killed her,” Morgoth explains, steepling his fingers together and settling them beneath his chin as if he prays, “Then they have made it very clear to me that they intend to kill _you_.” 

“Or that they think me already dead,” Maedhros grits out. He has to say _something_. _Maglor, Maglor, do not open the gates._

“Or that they mourn not the loss of one who defiled his father’s name while he lived, and failed his memory thereafter.” Morgoth sighs. “That is what you _really_ fear, is it not? Remember, my dear, I have observed you for many years. I find it interesting, to watch the boy who tortures himself not through the self-flagellating ascetism of your father’s Irish monks, but through hedonism—as if sin could be its own punishment.” 

“I do not believe in sin.” It sounds like something Curufin would say. 

“Oh, you are a dreadful liar.” Morgoth removes his hands from their pious position and gestures broadly, stepping aside. “Look now—there is a vision of a dawn if ever I saw one. You are like one of my flightless eagles—the pain of bondage haunts your eyes. And now you and I both know that no rescue comes, no word of faith from Macalaure.” 

“I know nothing.”

(Maglor, fighting in his arms, was still Maglor.)

“I wonder,” Morgoth reflects, “If you would say the same under the weight of a hundred lashes. But be that as it may, let me teach you your first lesson.” He steps forward to the iron railing, and touches the balustrade. “I am a generous man.” 

“You are a murderer.” 

“How clever your tongue is today!” Morgoth shakes his head; his hair is unruffled by the breeze. “Death is generous in its own way. So—leap into the dawn, my wingless angel.” 

Oh.

Oh, how he _wants._

Victory and brothers, graves and the river, peace and falling and no need to taste blood any longer.

 _Think_. (Athair’s voice.) It is a test of another sort. 

Maedhros can hear, as clear as day, as clear as if Bauglir was setting loose the words: _We shall not kill you, and so you will sooner kill yourself._ _You will wish for death, and you would rather steal it than wait._  

Athair would— 

(Athair is dead) 

Maedhros could fall, not leap, for his ankles and wrists are chained together. He could fall, then, crashing on the rocks below, and no doubt Morgoth would collect the shattered bones and send them to Maglor. 

Maglor, who might have taken the terms and his doom, their brothers’ doom, in his outstretched hands already.

 _He despaired of your coming_ , Morgoth would say, as Maglor shook and wept, unable to protect the rest of them from whatever onslaught followed. _And so he took his own life._  

Maedhros lifts his chin, and stands where he is. 

This feels, in its own way, like falling.

 

Back down the hall. Gone are the chance and the dawn. Boots thunder, and there is Mairon, his furs seeming to stand on end around his neck and shoulders. Jem and Galway at his belt. A brush of scarlet across his cheekbones, too stark to be a blush. 

It is blood, Maedhros realizes. Blood, smeared along the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. 

“They killed her,” Mairon says, and he is like a shower of sparks, like a ravening dog, and so much more than these things. “They—” and his knife is in his hand, and were Morgoth not beside him, hands draped possessively over him once more, Maedhros expects that he would have that blade sunk deep between his ribs. 

“Did I not tell you it was so?” Morgoth whispers, stroking the ragged hair at Maedhros’s temple with two fingers. “Dead, and your brothers quite clear in their wishes.” To Mairon, he says, “Anger becomes you. Join us in my study.” 

They turn a corner, and Maedhros would fight, if he only knew the way out— 

 

Morgoth fastens the leather straps on the chair himself, though he leaves the collar undone and removes the iron shackles afterwards. It is not an act of mercy. 

Mairon paces by the windows, furs bristling, his tail of hair switching over his shoulders, his knife still in his hand. 

Here again is Athair’s skull.  It is no better in the light of immediate knowledge, it is no less horrible to look into the grinning emptiness and know how all that he was once resided within it. Bile churns in Maedhros’s stomach.

“Are you familiar,” Morgoth is asking, while Mairon prowls and Maedhros stares at the bones of his father and his father’s love, “With the science of phrenology?” 

The question throws him, but—he is.  

He is because it is no science at all, and he only knows that because Fing— 

He is biting his tongue. He is biting his tongue and yet he is ruthlessly _whole,_ they have scarcely hurt him, but for a few blows to the head and a lock of hair cut away— 

“As much as I cherished the fire in your father’s eyes,” Morgoth tells him, “I could never hope to understand him until I held him in my hands. For days, I have studied him—and oh, it is just as I thought. The animal and human propensities—and the _superior sentiments_ , of which he had so few. Your father was more animal than man.” He cradles Athair in his laced fingers, stroking the indents that were once temples with the pads of his thumbs. Athair kissed their heads and mouthed prayers with them, Athair lectured and shouted and _joked_. “But a rather noble animal. Now the question of _you_ remains.” 

Despair is less the avalanche than the first drop of rain from sheeted skies.

(Maedhros should have run.)

He should have fought when he had a chance, while his hands were unbroken and unbound, should have planned an escape while he still could call his strength his own. 

He should have leapt from the mountainside in the moment mockingly given him, and whispered his brothers’ names in his descent.

His father is dead, but his father was right. Sometimes the losing fight is the only one there is. 

“I am sorry for it,” Morgoth says, “But to discern exactly how much of your father hides behind those self-same eyes, you will not be able to remain  _just_  as you are. That, and my dear Annatar demands a little vengeance.” To Mairon, who has stopped mid-step, eyes glittering, he says, “Prepare him.” 

There is very little time between Mairon’s knife flashing, and his hand twisted in Maedhros’s hair, dragging his head back. 

“No sudden moves,” Mairon hisses, with a smile that is not a smile, and he slides keen steel up the nape of Maedhros’s neck, shearing through the tresses caught in his fist, scattering them over Maedhros’s shoulders. They slip to the floor like so much copper straw.  

Maedhros gasps, which is a failing in itself—for he cannot pretend an attachment that is more than selfish pride. That his mother used to stroke his hair when he was sick or tired, that his love used to make it wild with her fingers—these must count for nothing, when it has long since been only a vain distraction and a plaything for whores.  

 _Athair,_  flares wildly to mind, rebuking his own rebuke.  _Athair’s hands have touched it_ —and through the blur in his eyes he can see all that is left of Athair, bare and empty as his son will be made by cruel hands, by his own sins. 

(He does believe in sin.) 

 _“Now,”_ Mother murmurs, _“Sit still. I am not very good at this.”_ (Her hands are very soft.)

Shame will last longer, but pain comes first. Maedhros shuts his eyes, and sets his teeth against his lip—old habits that can bring no comfort now. Mairon has no intention of letting him _seek_ comfort there. His knuckles twist above Maedhros’s forehead, jerking his chin up from where it dipped against his chest.

“Look at me,” Mairon commands him. “Else I take your scalp, too.” 

 _“Beautiful,”_ Mother says, years later, when she no longer has the keeping of Maedhros’s vanities. _“So much finer than mine.”_

(From her pack, he took her comb. The curve of it against his palm—that itself was memory.)

He opens his eyes (no use in fighting), and forces himself to meet the man’s yellow-bright gaze. His defiance must be in the fact that he will make no sound. 

 _“My angels three...”_ This, because those to whom the angel-names were given, eldest and youngest, all had Nerdanel’s flaming color.

With his knife-hand, Mairon gathers the strands to the edge of his steel. He saws at lock after lock in fierce delight, until nape to crown is cut as close as a convict’s, until Maedhros’s scalp smarts from the rough passes of the blade. Hard Mairon presses against the bruising left by Gothmog’s blows; relentlessly, his hands wrench to and fro what remains. And still Maedhros looks at him, as he was told, but with some silent fire, _not_ as he was told. Mairon, for all his glee, is also angry. The knife glances, once scraping temple so sharply that it nicks the curve of an ear. 

“Careful, careful,” Morgoth chides. “I did not give you permission to make him bleed.” 

“Not yet,” Mairon whispers. He slashes last the forelock by which he held his captive steady. 

( _A captive is all you are._ )

After it is over, Maedhros’s head is strangely, sickly light. His knees are thatched red-golden. His knees are not trembling only because he is holding himself still with every fiber of his being. Is this enough like fighting?

 _“It’s hardly important”_ —and he _swore_ he would not hear _her_ voice, would never hear it again, would drown it out with a hundred other women’s—" _But I am fond of it. It suits you.”_ (Her hands, gentle. Her hands, smoothing back the fringe from his brow.)

The point of Mairon’s knife pokes under his jaw, lifting his chin painfully high. “Are you so ashamed?” he asks, arching a pale brow. “To be shorn of beauty? It is not the only payment I shall take from of you.” 

Maedhros considers spitting at him, but it is too difficult to open his mouth, with the knife pressing so. 

“That is enough.” Morgoth waves a hand. “You have had your enjoyment. I shall finish with him.”  

The knife drops, but Mairon does not move, otherwise. His jaw is working, twitching, as if he is wracked so deeply by hatred that he cannot keep it from crawling on the underside of his skin.  

“ _Leave us_ ,” Morgoth says pointedly. 

 _Leave me_ , Maedhros begs, but not of Mairon. No—of all his mournful ghosts.

When Mairon is gone, Morgoth comes forward, treading on the mess of hair that rings the floor. “There now,” he says softly, pausing so that his mirror-polished shoes are nearly toe-to-toe with Maedhros’s battered boots. “I can see your pretty face much more clearly, though I promise you, I too mind the loss.” His hand slips over the cropped remnants of hair, and Maedhros grinds his teeth in his mouth to keep from shivering. This is all he is, now, a captive, and a constant refrainment.  

“Indeed,” Morgoth adds, after a moment during which his fingers have not ceased their restless touch, scrabbling behind his ears and dragging against sweat-drenched collar, “I intended to match you almost to your father’s skull, or as near as a soaped razor could bring you, but now I shall be generous again. Generous, and indulgent, of a little Titian red.” His hand falls away, and he steps back towards his desk, back to Athair, and to Maedhros’s dismay, he returns with the skull, and sets it on Maedhros’s knee. 

“If I were to unbind your hands, what would you do?” 

“Strike you.”  

“Yet you would not leap?” Morgoth smiles down at him. “I really _did_ think you might leap.” 

“I will not give you the satisfaction,” Maedhros answers, his voice hard and steady, though his skin prickles at the nearness of the thing on his knee— 

(And is it _easier_ , to call it a thing, or to call it by its old, own name?) 

“You think I want you dead?” Morgoth feigns surprise. Shock, even.  

“I think you want me afraid.” 

“Oh, I have your fear held close already.” Morgoth is not wearing the diamond today, but he taps the spot on his chest where he does wear it, and Maedhros can almost imagine it glinting there. Grandfather Finwe and Athair gone, and this man, living. “The first time I saw you—you remember? A brave little boy, trying to defend your mother. A frail man of the house! She tucked you behind her apron strings, quick enough.” 

“My mother settled that with a gun leveled at your eyes,” Maedhros answers. “If I recall.” He is thinking of exactly nothing.

“So her strength is enough for you not to mind your own weakness? Is that it?” Morgoth plucks the skull up by pinching the bridge of its nose. “I heard she was there, at Ulmo’s Bridge. You killed—how many men was it? Seven? As many as you are brothers, which, I suppose, was not an accident.” 

Maedhros has nothing to say to that. Nothing to say to what is a monster’s uncanny chokehold on the truth.

“The handsome redhead, is how you were described to my sources. Enviable beauty, to have it appended to a murderer’s epithet.” Morgoth nudges his foot against a fallen lock. “The handsome redhead, who split the hearts and heads of seven men—and for what? To limp across the country, tossing himself into every harlot’s bed, pretending that he did so out of duty?” He chuckles, and he hooks his fingers below Athair’s brow, letting the whole of _Athair_ dangle languidly in mid-air. “Make no pretense—you enjoy the indulgences of flesh, as much as you have enjoyed drowning yourself in spirits since the tender age of... _was_ it thirteen?” He is not smiling now; his look is too intent for that. “I told you, I have known you for a long time, so do not lie to me. You _reveled_  in those killings, in the power in your hands. You are composed solely of power and an even greater absence of power. _That_ is the only map that sketches you fully, yet, in my eyes.” 

“I thought your mapmaker deserted you.” It is a pathetic reply, but he must speak sharply or else chew his lips to ribbons. 

“Your father stole him from me.” Morgoth shrugs. “Your brother will not give him back.”  He sets the skull aside once more, and leaning forward, wraps both hands over Maedhros’s aching scalp. “Now, which animal are you?” 


	3. the cup mixed for myself

_Athair closed the door of his forge and locked it. Maedhros did not know why; he could not reach the high handle, and he would not try to leave if Athair did not wish it._

_When he turned, Athair’s eyes were very bright. He was biting his lip, which he had often told Maedhros not to do._

_“Nelyafinwe,” Athair said, “Do you know why I named you Michael, also?”_

Nelyafinwe _meant that they were being very serious. Athair rarely called Maedhros by his middle name._

_“No,” Maedhros said. “Why?”_

_“Because Michael is a protector,” Athair said. “And you must be able to protect your brothers, and your mother, just as I protect you.”_

_Maedhros nodded. He pressed his lips together, but he did not bite them. He was four years old; he could not be a baby like Maglor, like Celegorm._

_Athair washed his hands under the forge pump, and washed Maedhros’s too. The forge soap made them raw and red. Maedhros did not cry. Athair unfolded a felted roll of needles; they looked like the ones Mother used for quilting. Some were straight, some were curved._

_“I have cleaned these,” Athair said. “We are at no risk of infection.”_

_Maedhros did not even know what infection was._

_“Pain,” Athair said, “Has its uses.”_

 

“The brain is the organ of the mind,” Morgoth says softly, and he slips the collar around Maedhros’s neck, fastening it tightly enough that it traps itching scraps of hair against his skin. “Bone forms to protect it, and also betrays it by shape and dimension.” With one hand, he kneads the backs of his knuckles against the top of Maedhros’s sore head, and with the other, he traces the dome of Athair’s skull, resting it on Maedhros’s immobile forearm.

Maedhros does not look directly at it.

Morgoth's shoulders hulk above him. “The center of veneration is much more prominent in you than it is in him. Does this surprise? How could it. What did _he_ worship, other than himself?”

There were many things that Athair worshiped—sunsets, and his wife’s form, and his children's laughter, and his father, perhaps, above all.

“You know nothing about him,” Maedhros says, pitching his head forward to displace Morgoth’s wandering fingers. “Save his hate.”

“Yet hate is the best primer on a man.” Morgoth glances down his long nose, so that his half-moon, half-shut eyes are fixed on Maedhros’s. “For instance, you hate me—but not as your other brothers might. _They_ would hate me because I killed your father, and your grandfather, and because they believe I have killed you. But why do _you_ hate me, Maitimo?”

Maedhros grinds his teeth.

“ _How dare you call me that, you fiend!_ ” Morgoth cries, face twisting in exaggerated anguish that is no more fixed or human than a gaping tragedy mask. “Say it, if it comforts you! I will not chide you for any words that leave your chewed lips.” He chuckles, deep. “Of course, I would suggest—very friendly, if you please—that you do not try any more actual _chewing_.”

Maedhros glares.

“ _I_ should hate to fit you out with a muzzle and bit just yet, though Mairon has such a contraption ready. The choice is, as ever, yours.” Now, he passes one cold hand over Maedhros’s mouth, a mocking temptation, and when Maedhros does nothing—not even breathing, for the space of that moment—he sighs and returns to his inching investigation of Maedhros’s forehead. “I mean it,” he says. “We are all alone now.” His face hovers, too close. “You may speak freely.”

 _What would I say?_ This, he does not say at all.

“Maglor,” Morgoth reminds him, “Left you to _me_.”

 

 _“I don’t want another brother,” Maglor muttered. Celegorm, at two, was what Grandfather Finwe called_ a holy terror _._

_“We will love this one also,” Maedhros said, as Mother taught them. “We will love each brother more and more.”_

_Maglor shook his head, and whined, “I just want_ you _.”_

 

Morgoth lets him go. (No, not like that.) He steps back, setting Athair aside. Then he looks down at his hands as if some trace of Maedhros remains there, beyond the marks of his teeth. “You see,” he muses, “No matter how you _hate_ me, we are quite aligned.”

“ _Aligned_?” He regrets speaking as soon as the word leaves his lips, for his voice is hollow, but he cannot bear to hear the smooth-sliding tone fill the air for another unbroken moment.

_Oh, you fool._

“We have the same questions.” Morgoth’s eyes dance. “Why was there so much blood, in her dying? Which brother would spill blood like that, for you?" Brows swoop upward, false sympathy replacing false tragedy. "Did they know, Maitimo? What she did to you?”

 _You are safe now_ , said Maglor, when he held a worthless body in a moment that was better neither than life nor death. Maglor is not a killer. Maglor could not have—even though Maglor _saw_ —

“Think on it.” Morgoth smiles. His hand flits over Maedhros’s brow, nails grazing temple. “Which brother saved you from Thuringwethil’s pleasures?”

(Celegorm would have.)

Maedhros swallows. His mouth seems to be filled with sand. All this time, all this time being Athair’s loyal hands, and he did not _think_ , did not _learn_ who Melkor Bauglir really was. Athair was content to let him remain a monster, and so Maedhros cannot gain equal footing, can neither know nor understand what purpose a man like this might have with one wretched family—

_And even if you could understand, what would it matter?_

The snake-eyes blink, mere inches from his. For a man of his height, he moves quickly. Leans quickly. “Mairon,” he murmurs, “Cannot know.”

Maedhros flinches back. His eyes sting, and he tries to shake away their futile tearing.

“Mairon,” Morgoth says, almost kindly, “Would kill the one who did it.”

_Where is Mairon now?_

Maedhros grips the hard arms of the chair, straining in earnest against the straps for the first time. He was a fool to think of himself, to judge what was wise for his _own_ future. He made a poor showing at that anyway, letting his wings be clipped and his head be cropped, mute and compliant. What protest did he brandish, beyond a few whimpers of scorn?

And now, what of his brothers?

“I shall not tell him.” Morgoth offers it like a promise, straightening. Staring at his hands again. “Let us hope, you and I, that the day does not come when he is free to wrest a name from you. Would it be...I suppose it _would_ be Maglor or Celegorm, the two next eldest. The two who must lead, with you in enemy arms.”

Maedhros can see nothing but their faces, yet he demands, “What do you care for any of them?”

Morgoth has been prodding at the wound on his palm. Now he lifts his gaze, amused. “Why, I should like to know them!”

With one step he is here again, and his hands seek again their probing path along Maedhros’s scalp.

“If you will not answer my questions, I must answer them myself. _I_ have seen you more as son than brother, in our past, but you kept _brothers_ alive all these thousands of miles. Or must we credit that accomplishment to Feanor? Tell me, loyal eldest. Was he really more attentive to the tender care of his children than he seemed? I own it true that the youngest did not fall until the father had fallen.”

Maedhros must breathe. He must breathe again, breathe evenly, and remind himself that he feels, in this moment, no pain.

_You have to stay..._

That is the voice of his littlest brother.

 _Godson,_ Mother said proudly, and Maedhros watched, wide-eyed and all of ten years old, very proud himself, when the clear water was poured over that small head.

His mind swims away from the deep-plunged point of loss, but his mind is drowning.

“As I said.” Maedhros stares hard. “You did not know him.”

_Feanor or Amrod? Father or brother? Maglor who called you safe, or Maglor who made no parlay?_

“Not know Feanor? I knew him better than he knew himself. And I know you, Maitimo”—that name again, with the point of a fingertip caressing the bridge of his nose to accompany it—“better than he ever could.”

“You can kill me or keep me as you wish,” Maedhros answers. (Celegorm must have done it with a knife.) “But I see not why I should pretend you speak the truth.”

Feather-light, along his forehead, and then pressing greedily. “What a well-developed capacity for mirthfulness you have! And so little employment thereof, lately. Were you a laughing child? There are smile lines hidden in these smooth cheeks, I am sure.”

Maedhros had not much time to be a laughing child, but Amrod was.

Athair always said that liars refused to answer honest questions, but Maedhros needs no adage as _proof_ , here. He only wishes he had not remembered _that_ , for Athair left many a question unanswered, too.

“Mirth and veneration…promising contours. Where did it all go wrong?” Now his hands have ambled to just above Maedhros’s ears. Maedhros longs to shut his eyes. They are dull with being propped open so long. But to shut his eyes is to allow Morgoth to be the only one watching. “This Maglor—this _Macalaure_ —must be more Feanor’s son, to hold the fort at Mithrim rather than give it up for you.”

“A fortress for one man’s life,” Maedhros mocks. _Athair, give me this. Give me scorn._  "What fool would bargain it?"

 _Go, then,_ Maglor said.

(Celegorm must have done it with a knife, and Maglor must have been so frightened—and if Mairon knows it was Celegorm he will gut him like a beast—)

(Celegorm leads and Maglor follows, in this world without Maedhros, and they need each other more than Maedhros can ever again be permitted to need _them._ )

“Not just one man,” Morgoth is saying, somewhere far away and far above him. “ _Y_ _ou_.”

(Even Caranthir let slip a smile, if Maedhros was the one coaxing him, and Maglor laughed not often but so sweetly, _yes_ , Maglor’s laugh is almost the first sound he remembers loving.)

“My brothers," Maedhros croaks, for his throat is damnably parched, "know that strength lies in killing your enemies where they stand.”

“And yet I find you... _meek_.” Morgoth traces his bitten lips, tempting him again. Maedhros— _brother, son, failure_ —is deciding whether or not he has earned this. Morgoth tires of that touch at last, and shifts to rest the pad of one large thumb on Maedhros's forehead. “But I should not be surprised, for here now— _destructiveness_. That is what this curve of bone portends, and it is one your bold father did not share after all. Indeed, in my estimation—you are nothing alike.”

Maedhros uncleaves his tongue from the roof of his mouth to say, low, “You learn slowly, for one who knows so much.”

Morgoth takes no insult. “Was your bold father very shocked, then,” he queries, “When he found you splayed like a swooning damsel on Thuringwethil’s bed?”

Now, Maedhros presses the tip of his tongue against the wall of his teeth.

_She is dead. She is dead, you will never have to..._

“Let us put aside Maglor, for the moment, and what he would not _give_ —let us speak of your own... _generosity_. Did your father ask that of you? Desecration of a temple, for the finding of a tabernacle?” Morgoth lifts his hands away from Maedhros’s skin to rub them together, cracking the knuckles, then resumes his enveloping touch. “You were rather given to profligacy in your dandy days too, were you not?”

(Fingolfin sat across a desk from him once, and threatened to punish him for that very crime.

Fingolfin, when begged, had mercy.)

(It has been months since he dared to think of his uncle. He does not exactly _dare_ now.)

“I am a busy man,” Morgoth continues—if it can rightly be called continuation when his voice is a sinuous thread, unfollowable but by his own caprice. “And I have long balanced matters of state and matters of progress, with my...interest in your father’s sprawling house.”

 _He was watching you. That is what he wants you to understand._ Maedhros is weary, and horribly thirsty, and the news does not—does not shock him, anymore.

“I saw you stumbling—first just a few lost strides, and then a lost year, and some might say, a lost future. Would they be right to say so?” Morgoth’s hands go still, just for a breath, and _hold_. “Maitimo, Maglor is not the first to leave you lost. Why does no one ever save you?”

 

_You must be able to protect your brothers, and your mother, just as I protect you._

(Gone, for a year. Gone, on an April night. Gone, in the Sunday pews and the winter rage and the scarlet fever and gone, gone, gone, _just as I protect you_ , _he marked my eldest son_ , _if you would_ —

 _If you would._ )

 

_“I am going to drive the needle under my nail,” Athair said, holding it up to the light. It was so thin, and so silver, and it looked very dangerous to Maedhros all the same. “I will not cry out, because I expect the pain, and I am stronger than the pain.”_

_Maedhros did not breathe. Athair slid the needle under his nail, and he did not make a sound, and when he drew it back, the thin silver line turned red._

_“Now,” Athair said, when he had bandaged the finger in plaster. “It is your turn.”_

 

Morgoth turns abruptly. He strides to the massive desk and draws out the chair from behind it. It is strange to see him stooped so, a man’s arms and legs completing an ordinary task. Maedhros follows him from beneath half-lidded eyes. The chair is brought very near. Once seated, the wax-carved face is level with his own again. Their knees are almost touching.

Maedhros has lost, _is_ lost, and is unable to see a man apart from the vision that calls itself _nightmare_ , at the door of his closing childhood.

_Now, it is your turn._

“I have so many questions,” Morgoth explains. All in black, he might be a priest. A father. Maedhros suppresses a shiver. “Hypotheses, really. I am tasked by a greater purpose, that bores me utterly and which would assuredly bore one so young as you. Suffice it to say, we are none of us... _free_. You will not be able to spend every day of your time here in my company.”

“A terrible loss,” Maedhros snaps, nails hard against the wood. It is an easy shot, which likely means he shouldn’t have taken it. _Every day. Every day, because he doesn't want to kill you—_

“You will find it so, I think.” Morgoth spreads his hands broadly on his knees; considers, and then sets one instead on Maedhros's knee. “For, apart from a few details, this is quite a civilized encounter.”

(Maglor too afraid to lead, Celegorm too brash to be wise. _She_ must have made him angry. Must have spoken of—what she did to a man who went willingly to her bed. Celegorm would not understand that. With his noble disgust and wild freedom, he would not understand that at all.)

“How much does Maglor need you?”

Maedhros’s teeth are ground together again. He digs his heels into the floor, or imagines that he does so, that his legs do not jitter and shake beneath that cursed touch.

“Interesting.” Morgoth chuckles. “Now, what about the little one who drowned? Amras? Amrod? However did you tell them apart?”

 

_“They look exactly the same,” Celegorm pouts._

_“Not at all,” Maedhros breathes. Amrod is the one who always reaches for him first._

 

“You are fortunate to have such fair features.” Those spidery fingers explore the edge of Maedhros's kneecap, as if all his bones bear secrets.

 _It's a pack of_   _lies_ , Fingon says indignantly, but Maedhros sends him quickly away.

Morgoth's hand tightens painfully, even as his tone turns playful and exasperated. He does not like to be ignored. “Fortunate, indeed, for otherwise, I would be like to wonder how you charmed society at all! So silent. Though of course, your talents lay in more than words.” He leans forward, hot breath close and gloating—and this time, when he strokes Maedhros about the cheeks and temples, his fingers graze the stinging wound on one ear.

“Did your mother ever know? That you reeked of drink…or of sin?” Morgoth whispers. His torn right hand remains clamped down and his left is teasing the nick left by Mairon's blade. Maedhros's very lungs feel frozen. “I ask, you see, because _I_ call nothing a sin but what others do. You used to button up your choir-boy cassock and serve at Mass—I know what the papists teach. Everything is wrong, and everything is wanted…have you not found it so?”

“My mother is gone,” Maedhros answers at last. Too thin. _Weak,_ in breath and bravery. “You know it, and I know it. What does it matter?”

“Everything matters,” Morgoth purrs, pleased. Pleased, of course, to have an _answer_.

 _When will you learn?_ (That is Athair’s voice. Athair is farther away than the monster.)

(The monster has him, almost in his arms.)

“And everything is also wrong. Come now, and answer like a man. How many women have you taken to your bed—or is it the other way round? Not so much a man after all, letting them take _you_ —”

Maedhros snaps at him. Morgoth snatches his hand out of reach, and slaps him with the other.

“You said it was my choice to bite or not,” Maedhros tells him. He's close enough to spit; perhaps he'll try that next. “Yet you’re afraid to lose a finger. Whose choice is that?”

The next blow is harder, and his lip, already tender, splits open. Blood salts his mouth, and steadies him.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Morgoth says, breath whickering through his too-long nose. “Don’t make me spoil that delicate face.”

“Not yet?” Maedhros jeers. He is all alone, now that he cannot need Maglor or Celegorm, but spite makes it easier. _That_ makes him think of Curufin, though he does not wish Curufin anywhere near _here_.

“Are you angry?” The monster is recovered; his smile grows and grows and _grows_ —it is so impossibly _wide_ —“Anger is good. Anger comes from pain, you know. I think it _pains_ you to imagine your mother learning what a whore her perfect son was, while she still kissed and blessed him.” Out of reach, but only just, he taps his grinning lips. “And of course, you have fallen further still. Would that be _worse_ than her knowing you to be a killer?”

 _She would still kill him for you_ , a voice whispers in Maedhros’s mind. _No matter what you have done. He is lying_ —she _would still save you_.

(It is all he can do not to writhe against his bonds.)

“Anger comes from pain, then. We agree. And after anger, I believe, will come gratitude—nay, do not look at me so.” He grips Maedhros's jaw, keeping it shut, and strokes Maedhros’s brow. There is no longer hair enough to push back. For that, Maedhros is almost grate—

His teeth cut into his tongue.

“ _Gratitude_ ,” Morgoth gloats, as if he reads the thought, unspoken though it is. “Feanor would feel none. He never felt gratitude for anything in his life—not your mother’s seduction, nor his sons’ slavish devotion—but _you_? You are grateful for every scrap that has ever been thrown in your way. Every press of flesh. Every drop of spirits that dulls your senses and makes this sorry head spin.” The fingers of both hands prod at the nape of Maedhros’s neck, now. The cuff-linked, tailored wrists are heavy on his shoulders, a collar of another kind. “You will be grateful, in time, even for pain. You long for forgiveness, and you know not how else to earn it.”

“I do not _intend_ to earn it.”

Celegorm’s knife was not forgiveness. Maglor keeping within Mithrim is not forgiveness.

Maedhros does not want it to be.

“Oh, yes—you intend to kill me, and flee this place, drenched in the blood of my poor railroad workers. Is that it?” Morgoth lowers his hands and rises, towering. “I have spoken to you before about the limits of your skill at lying; I think I may soon be obliged to repeat myself.”

 

_“Did you know where we were?” Finrod’s hair was full of leaves._

_“Hadn’t the faintest.” Maedhros was quite certain, at the time, that he would never let his brothers or cousins stray beyond the borders of Formenos again, much less lead the misadventure himself._

_Finrod grinned ruefully. “I was damn terrified, what with the storm.”_

_Maedhros almost answers, So was I._

 

“Hatred is a primer of a man’s desires.” Morgoth leans on the back of his own chair, elbows fanned like the hunched wings of a bird of prey. Not an eagle, though. Never an eagle. "Lies are where  a man manifests his fears. You keep lying, when we both full know the truth.”

“If you knew all you wanted,” Maedhros answers, recalling the searing stability of a needle in his finger, as he should have done sooner, “You would not have me here.”

 _He won’t come back,_ Mother says. Maedhros is very tired, and even with the needles it grows harder and harder to lock her away. Mother, who never _did_ know what her eldest was. _The man at the door, he won’t_ —

“Would I not?” Maedhros hates looking in his eyes as much as he hated to look in Mairon’s, but Morgoth’s gaze is somehow harder to hold. “Would you like to guess at my purposes in bringing you to myself?”

“No.” He assumes, at least, Morgoth’s purposes are interrogation and revenge, though he was caught by sheer chance.

Chance. It must be chance. He must not be a _choice_. He blinks through pain that Athair never taught him.

( _The needles are not enough._ )

(His mouth hurts too, and his head is light, not just from the shearing. He has not eaten, by his own count, for almost three days. He has not drunk—oh, for the mercy of water.)

Morgoth is ever restless, or perhaps it is not restlessness when it brings him such delight. He abandons his chair and takes up his old position, standing and stooping. His hands swallow up Maedhros's vision.

“What fine lashes you have.” When fingers brush them, Maedhros shuts his eyes at last, but the fingers follow, tracing the hollow above his cheekbone. “Kissed with gold. If I gave the word, Mairon would tear them out one by one.”

Maedhros is sure he would.

(Better him than Celegorm.)

(Better that Celegorm protect Maglor, than that Maedhros destroy them both.)

“We will not speak of Mairon now.” Morgoth’s tone turns soothing. “I see how it distresses you. He will only join us if _you_ force him to. That choice, you understand, lies in these trigger-swift hands.”

(Maedhros’s hands, bound though they are, are shaking.)

“A drink. You look like a man much in need of a drink. What poisons do your veins demand?”

This, at least, must be obvious.

 

“Come now. Are you not thirsty?”

“No,” he rasps.

“Lies and fears, boy. Lies and fears.” Morgoth releases cheek and chin, where he had grasped them, and retires to his desk. He lifts a crystal pitcher there, and from a drawer that glides open as if on oiled runners, he removes a crystal whiskey glass. It is cut square at the corners; Maedhros has held a hundred like it.

Morgoth pours water into the cup. Even the sound of it makes Maedhros’s tongue drier, makes his throat seize up.

“Drink,” Morgoth commands, covering the distance between them in two steps and pressing the rim of the cup against Maedhros’s raw lips.

Maedhros will not part them. Not for this. He has given nothing away, but his freedom. No information. No _want_. (He did not try to leap.)

“Do you think I poisoned it?”

Maedhros blinks, glares.

“What reason do I have to lie?” Morgoth asks him, sounding almost hurt. “I have, after all, no fears.”

Fear, and pain—and Athair handing him another needle, another needle, until the little cries stop sneaking out from his throat, until he has bled without even wincing, and Athair says, _tomorrow we will try again_ —Athair and his diamonds, Athair and his bullets, Athair and Maedhros, and the only love he ever really tried to deserve.

( _Tried._ )

The water is very cool against his stinging dryness of his mouth.

(Maglor is not coming to save him. Maglor— _cannot_.)

Maedhros sips, just a little.

And then, as with all things, he crumbles, and gives in, and he drinks deeply, gulping and shuddering, while Morgoth smooths his stubbled hair and murmurs words that have neither sound nor meaning.

Afterwards, Maedhros cannot quite look at him.

( _He tried, and did not succeed._ )

 

_“Maedhros,” Athair said, frowning a little, “We have spoken of this. The stinger will hurt, and will make you want to panic, but it cannot kill you. In a few days, the pain will be gone.”_

_“A few days?” Maedhros’s voice was too high, too baby-like. Maglor didn’t even sound so small anymore, and he was only three._

_“A few days. Now, will you bear it?” Athair’s voice was as soft as when he read to Maedhros and Maglor from the great book of stories, though he had not done so in months._

_Maedhros stretched out his hand. Athair let the wasp crawl upon it, then pressed the pointed abdomen down with his thumb._

 

“What are you doing?”

“ _Now_ you have questions, when I have tired of our talking.” Morgoth smiles, ceasing not from undoing the straps at Maedhros’s neck and wrists and waist. He stands back and nods. “Your ankles. Free them.”

This a trick, Maedhros _knows_ it is a trick, but _even a losing fight_ —the pathetic heaps of his own hair on the floor around him are a reminder of what comes to those who do not struggle.

He feels his cheeks flame as he bends to unfasten the buckles. He has no hope of a mirror and no need for one, yet he pictures what a scarecrow he must make and is ashamed to have shown so much weakness, so soon.

“Stand,” Morgoth orders, and he stands.

 _Strike him, you fool, strike him_ —but Morgoth will be expecting that.

 

 _My brother,_ says Celegorm, to a farm-boy bully, _isn’t scared of anything._

_Damn terrified._

 

“I have seen to the state of your mind,” Morgoth says, “And though that is a study that shall long engage me, in my precious hours of leisure, I have many responsibilities to attend to. We must be efficient! I shall now catalogue the rest of you, the better to know your uses.”

Maedhros rubs his wrists, his fingers. They have gone a little numb. He almost forgot his own hands, subject to Morgoth's for so long.

“I have men outside the door,” Morgoth explains patiently, as though he is speaking to a child. “At a word, they will strip you to the skin. If you do it yourself, I might allow you to keep a few threads.”

How right that this should be his fate—after Grandfather was shot on his own steps, and Athair died as he lived, in blaze and glory, Maedhros will be degraded a hundred times, and never killed. He was the one who chose his sins.

(Maglor _did_ try to save him from that, but he never quite knew how.)

(And Fing—but he won’t think of Fingon.)

He narrows his eyes, and stays still.

Morgoth’s laugh fills his ears. “Oh, come now. Are you so modest? If I only had a tavern wench at hand, surely—”

_We do what we must._

Athair trained him; Athair is all he has left. It was never about the pain.

Maedhros takes a step forward, and as he does so, he lifts the hem of his shirt and tugs it over his head. But he was a dancer, once, and even when seeming blinded he knows where his body is. He lunges forward when Morgoth will not _exactly_ be expecting it, and slams the man against his own desk. The pitcher falls with a smash. Something clatters—that might be Athair.

(Athair would forgive him.)

Maedhros tears the shirt from his face with one hand, and with the other, finds the impossibly wide throat to clench and choke.

Morgoth, for a moment, is not laughing.

Maedhros knees, hard, at the black velvet waistcoat, and rakes his nails across that corpse-white cheek. Maedhros spits and claws and _fights_.

That is the last thing he sees: angry striping scratches where before a smile seemed to rise from every  pore, and eyes that flash as no snake’s eyes ever could, but rather, as a man’s do when a man is _afraid_ —

His head fills up with snowdrifts, and his eyes fall shut—

—and he falls too.

 

_Did you really think, you little fool, that there was nothing in the water?_

 

 _My love, be careful._ Mother, with tears running down her cheeks, and also—shapes beside her, shapes of faces, shapes that walk through doors long closed.

 _No, please do not come, not now_ , he begs, and begging suffices, for once, to keep the others away.

Brothers and friends. Sometimes the two are one. Sometimes—

He is swimming.

He is drowning.

For Amrod's sake, he is glad that drowning does not hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read part 88, LEPIDOPTERA, next:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19085905


	4. comes first and follows after

_“Fingon, what did you do with the rest of that bottle of wine?”_

_Fingon grimaces. “I put it in the cupboard. Sorry.”_

_Fingon is careful and easily worried, and so Maedhros laughs to put him at ease. “I should have guessed. Well, no matter.” It does not matter because he has Grandfather’s gift tucked under the mattress, a very promising lump. He leans back and crooks his elbows at an awkward angle behind his head and—_

_“Is that really more comfortable?” Maglor snipes._

 

(It isn’t. He can’t move his arms.)

 

 _“Hammer the nail in,” Athair commands. His hand is over Maedhros’s hand._ (Two strokes, metal on metal, pinned fast.)

 

_“I know you are more than these indiscretions. But you must show me, Maedhros.”_

_Can’t breathe_ —can’t breathe— _so, he nods. Nods, that his uncle may know that the words are taken to his (imperfect, rotten, tremulous) heart._

_“No harm shall come to Fingon because of me,” he says, forcing a smile. That smile has always satisfied Athair. “Nor because of my misdeeds. You speak very plainly, sir. I shall feel the smart of it for a week.”_

_“And I shall not warn you again,” his uncle answers, quietly stern. “But I will accept your word on the subject.”_

_When Athair is angry, he shouts. Is this worse?_

 

(There are splinters all up and down his spine—Arms-shoulders-back all tender against the rough itch of wood.)

 

_“So what I was thinking,” Finrod says, ruffling his golden thatch of hair with both hands, “Is that we four should go boating.”_

_“In April?”_

_“You sound like Uncle Fingolfin!”_

_“Surely not,” Maedhros mumbles. (Never that.) “I only mean, it is April, and may be cold on the water.”_

_(It will be colder in Formenos, but he wants more than anything—)_

_“I knew exactly what you meant,” Finrod says, very kindly. “But if you are worried about Maglor’s throat, those precious singing pipes_ — _well then! We shall wrap him up in Grandmother’s finest muffler. Come, Maedhros. You only turn eighteen once!”_

_He has never really been able to say no to Finrod (nor to anyone)._

 

(Metal, not leather, bites at his wrists. He cannot twitch away. Cannot—)

 

_Her nails are sharp. He feels that at once, as they settle against his chest, over his heart. Her teeth and tongue are the greater horror, he is sure, at this instant. He is not thinking (trying not to think) of where her hands are._

_That is, until she scores deep, opening his skin. His breath catches sourly in his throat and she laughs. She laughs and lifts his head, drawing him to her. As he follows, still obedient, her fingers trail down his back and there,_ again, _that sharp stinging pain._

_She means to hurt him._

_He is going to let her._

 

(The world tilts. Nothing tilts with it. Or maybe he does?

 

_Pine. They are burning great boughs of pine, and the needles flare to golden thread soon ash-crumbled. The scent is thick in his throat, and one more drink will settle his head, one more drink has never hurt him._

 

(A brush of fingers. _Fingers_? Pine, thick in his nose and throat. Is this the forest or the fire or something else?)

 

_“Isn’t this glorious?” Finrod cries cheerfully, and Maedhros can scarcely hear his voice on the wind but what does it matter? Maglor and Fingon are wrestling with the sail and Maedhros and Finrod laugh together and join them._

_“One of you will be knocked flat by this boom if you’re not careful,” Maedhros warns. Fingon is watching his every move, attentive as always, but Maglor is entranced by the seaspray and is liable to be cast overboard at any moment._

_Finrod tugs Maglor to safety._

_This is an April day, but it feels more like June. Warm and_ —Gothmog will take another twenty, sir, if you can spare them.

_“Maitimo, you must paint this!” Fingon calls._

He spends men so quickly, these days.

The last batch was rather sickly, sir. The ties are heavy. He said he’ll take the strongest you can offer.

 _He should tell Fingon he really cannot paint at all, he has given it up. The twins’ sketches surpass his own now, he expects. He should say_ something _, but..._

My strongest is not for Gothmog, yet. You see him resting, there.

(Resting?)

_“Maedhros, aren’t you listening?”_

_“He’s a fool,” Finrod says coldly, not in Finrod’s voice._ (This didn’t happen.) _“Standing there tied to the mast. Pay him no mind, cousins.”_

Take as many as you can chain together. The guards will tell you which are useless at digging and building and would be better at the front.

 

_Did you fall in the river?_

_Did you drown?_

 

_“You cannot die. For I will walk the rest of the way to the west coast and into the ocean, Maedhros. I swear to God I will.”_

 

The splinters are still in his back, pricking at the edges of his shoulder-blades even when he tries to shift away. He cannot shift away because his arms are stretched high above his head, and his neck is likewise collared and fastened down.

No longer in the chair, then. But of course—

He fought.

Maedhros’s fingers scrabble against each other, but they are useless. His knees sag, and he cannot straighten his legs properly because his ankles are cuffed so tightly. As best he can make it out, by touch alone (his eyes are still shut, and his head still aches)—

 _Open your eyes_ , Athair’s voice pounds between his temples.

The first time he opened his eyes in this room, he saw Athair’s empty bones before him. And it is the same room, for it smells the same, a little like chloroform and too much like pine. Funereal, Maglor would call it.

Oh, Christ. He’s muzzy and barely awake and he’s thinking of Maglor again.

 _I will walk the rest of the way and into the_ —

As Athair commands after death, Maedhros opens his eyes.

The desk has been reordered. The chair is gone, the clippings of hair swept away, and Melkor Bauglir is staring out the windows with Athair’s mandible clutched behind his back.

The board Maedhros is bound to smells of pine, also; an armless crucifix with no savior in sight.

Maedhros tries to keep his breathing even, natural, but he fears that without even looking, Morgoth knows him to be awake.

 _The water_. Maedhros cannot hang his head; if he so much as dips his chin the iron ring about his neck digs into his jaw. He blinks, sorting out the pieces—much shame, more grief, and a fight that looked almost like a moment’s victory.

(Not really.)

With his arms taut and twisted, the wound left by Mairon’s knife aches. Maedhros concentrates on that, and on his dull headache, and on the worried skin of his shoulders. Then he counts his teeth with the tip of his tongue.

It makes him not much calmer.

(The game has changed.)

“I am rather honored,” Morgoth says, still to the window. “Honored that you should indulge me a little, in an attempt to show me some of your father’s fire.” He faces Maedhros at last, across the room, and the shallow cuts blaze untreated on his face.

Maedhros hopes they will scar.

(Is the monster angry? He must be. Maedhros, for a moment, made him _afraid_.)

( _Let that give you strength._ )

“My father did not raise seven sons to be cowed by the likes of you,” Maedhros says. He has known this headache, this fading delirium before. He will not let it silence him this time, even if speaking is like speaking in a dream. “It was years before I even knew your name. Our father called you a jail-crow, when your lies ran too fast for your tongue, and Manwe locked you in your own house for five years. Jail-crow is what _we_ called you, too.”

Morgoth walks very slowly. Maedhros wishes he would not. He wishes he would rush, and strike him hard across the face, or shout and storm.

Instead, he is smiling again, and the scraped skin on Maedhros’s neck and back crawls.

“You did not want to be stripped of your garments,” Morgoth says, when he has at last stopped only an arm’s length away. “Yet in your feeble gloating you show yourself very willing to strip your soul. After all our talking, you still speak of seven sons. Seven sons _raised_. Maedhros, I remember the night in Formenos, too. You were a child, then.” He strokes the backs of his knuckles down Maedhros’s cheek. “You are a child now.”

Maedhros spits.

“Charming,” Morgoth muses. He cleanses his lantern jaw with a handkerchief. “I see you have learned nothing. Nothing, from your mother’s abandonment or your father’s death. Nothing from your littlest brother. It _was_ Amrod, wasn’t it?”

He will never be free of this. No pain that Athair showed him can account for the lost and broken body of a baby brother. Maedhros’s head clears, horribly, and he drops his gaze. It is only for a second, but it makes Morgoth chuckle.

“Think on that, my little jail-crow.” Morgoth gazes at him for a moment so long that Maedhros feels those eyes left as marks on his forehead.

When Maedhros does not answer, Morgoth shrugs.

“You’ve given up your shirt willingly, at least,” he says. “So let me look at you.” And with that, his wide pale palms and wandering fingers run over throat and collarbones and chest. “You’ve never felt the touch of a whip or a brand, have you?”

 _A brand_? He should have expected that, he should have—

Morgoth slides one hand higher, to the turn of Maedhros’s left arm, fingers curling around the bicep. Maedhros knows too well what he will see there.

“I heard they struck you at the bridge, murderer. This must be that scar. Was it stitched by a brother’s trembling hands? Or did your father deign to nurse his loyal firstborn?”

_Maglor._

_Maglor’s hands._

“But ah—what did that bullet ruin, beyond your heart?” Morgoth asks softly, with new mirth trickling into his tone. “What is this sailor’s ink? A crooked anchor. I would hear _that_ story, eagerly...and from your lips.”

 _Maedhros, I want to do it_.

He _swore_ he would keep Fingon out of this whenever he could, swore he would never shame even Fingon’s gracious memory by clinging to it, but that is Fingon, seventeen again, and a little green around the gills.

 _It will hurt_ , Maedhros said, then. Not him, of course; he was not afraid of needles. Not anymore.

 _I don’t care. I said I’d do it and_ —

“You must learn to bargain!” Morgoth chides, still cheerful, but impatient as always when his captive’s attention is drawn aside. “An unknown story, a delicious secret, in return for my extended favor.”

“Your favor?”

“Do not pretend that you do not understand. You shall want that favor, seeing as you bring all this smooth, unbroken flesh to me.” His chilling touch returns, gliding up Maedhros’s sternum towards his throat. “Here, and here, I think it has known nothing harsher than a woman’s hands. We shall remake it, my friends and I.” Then his thumb fills the hollow left by Thuringwethil’s teeth. “But this _is_ a brand after all, just as she proclaimed it.. My, my, what a nasty mark. Proportionate to the sin that earned it, is it not? Eve bit the apple for lust. That is what the sermons leave out. Lust is the only sin worth perfecting—and you hate yourself too much to do it. Such makes the difference between beggars and deities. A pity.” Maedhros turns his face away, as best he can, but Morgoth reaches up and turns it back. “You,” he echoes, spittle-close, “Are a pity.”

He steps away at last and Meadhros breathes, even as his skin creeps with the near memory of every point of contact. Four scratches, like the claws of a cat—that is what he left on Morgoth’s cheek.

And yet—

No victory. Not even for the moment he hoped it.

 

Maedhros has always been afraid of being hunted. He should have taken it for the warning it was, when the fear in his dreams did not feel like that.

_This is the other side._

 

“You made me a little angry, today,” Morgoth says. “And that was a choice on your part; a choice of paths.” He rummages in his desk, facing Maedhros but not looking at him, though his thick brows rise and fall like blinking.

_You’re going to die here, but they are not. Your brothers are not._

_(It was a quick death.)_

_My love_ — Mother again. Maedhros fends her off as best he can.

“Your path will be harder now,” Morgoth explains. Patient, slightly scolding. “You have shown a stubborn streak, my boy, and I know that is just as you wished it. _Feanor’s obstinate son_. I would commend such _true_ resolve, but I must punish liars.”

 _Fight. The losing fight is all there is._ “You will punish me for marking your cursed face, and for nothing else,” Maedhros retorts.

“Hmm.” Morgoth raises his gaze. “I think not. _I_ think I have reached all necessary conclusions.” He steps round the edge of the desk, and unfurls one long hand like the milky belly of a serpent.

Half-a-dozen fletched throwing darts lay on his palm.

 _Pain has its uses_.

Maedhros swallows hard. The tendons of his throat, strained like that, will be visible. He must do better. He must—

Morgoth leans against the desk, crooking his arm at the elbow. There is no bandage on his hand where Maedhros bit him, and now the wounds can all be seen at once: the nailmarks and the teethmarks. They are less satisfying, at the moment, than Maedhros might wish.

“You are not your father,” Morgoth says, sounding almost bored. “You have known that all your life, and I suspected it at once. Now I am certain.”

The dart sinks in the tense muscle between his lifted shoulder and his chest. It hangs there, and it stings, but Maedhros does not cry out.

“You try very hard to be brave.” Morgoth tilts his head, shuts one eye, and second dart is harder to ignore, glancing off the dent between his collarbones. “Your father did not even consider the merits of bravery; did not understand its _effort_ , separate from what he already was.”

The next one lands in the hollow of two ribs. It does not fall.

“These are for your lies,” says Morgoth.

 

(His throwing stars were spent at Utumno, and he wielded them without a smile on his face.

He is different. He is different.

And that only means that he is the victim, here, and not the hunter. The hunt is over, anyway.)

 

Maedhros breathes more quickly.

“No witty sallies? No insults? No names by which your family called me?” Morgoth eases himself up from the edge of his desk and steps forward, still slow, still deliberate, but the dart that flies from his hand embeds itself in Maedhros’s cheek and Maedhros— _gasps—_

_—will make you want to panic—_

“A little close for comfort, eh?” Morgoth pauses once more, and he is only a few paces away and his aim takes _so much time_ and _not enough_ —

But then he does not throw at all.

A step, another step. If Maedhros closes his eyes he won’t be able to see, but if he doesn’t—

Morgoth smiles, close-lipped, white-lipped, and sinks the point of the dart in the soft part just under Maedhros’s left eye. He presses it in with a fingertip, so deep it seems to black vision out with terror.

Maedhros is holding his breath as he has never held it before, and then at last, Morgoth draws the dart back out.

Maedhros sobs. Just once, before he contains it, but once is enough for defeat. Then, too, his shoulders, twisted and stretched as they are, convulse against the rough wood. He cannot still them.

 _Think of the dead, think of the dead, you are the one who could not save them, you cannot let your fear make you_ —

“You’re white as a ghost,” Morgoth hums, and he dabs away the beads of blood with the same white handkerchief as before, a handkerchief that he does not seem to have applied to his own weeping cuts. “Did you believe I might really take an eye?”

Maedhros keeps his mouth shut. He could not save himself from sobbing, but he will not whine.

( _Five is the number of your brothers, now; eight is the number of your cousins. What is the number of your kills?_ )

“A hard path, and a new lesson,” Morgoth says, still uncomfortably close. “You are not your father, though you want to be. You will never be your father.” He picks the remaining darts from Maedhros’s skin and folds them in the red-specked cloth. “But now you are mine, and I think you know your father’s secrets.”

 

 _“Do you all swear never to reveal what you see, and what you know?”_ Athair said.

(He did not have to ask.)

 

_“This has been a perfect day,” Fingon exclaims, his straight dark hair all wild from the river-breeze. They can smell the saltwater down here; it is so much cleaner than the city streets. “A perfect day. Thank you for inviting me.”_

_“As if we wouldn’t,” Maedhros scoffs. With the four of them together, it is a kind of perfection—though not the only kind._

_Not the only kind, for a boy with his heart in two places._

 

Did Mother return to Formenos? He hopes so; hopes that she is mourning in a quiet way, sleeping soundly at night, taking comfort in her gardens, hearing nothing of the railroad that will cause her to worry. Before—two weeks ago, even, he dared not hope that she would return, knowing little good could come of it. It is only when Athair is dead and Amrod is dead and Maedhros is slowly dying in a way that does not look like dying that he realizes it _was_ a hope, despite this. Still, and still buried.

(There is something kind about the things that stay buried, and nothing kind about that which grasping hands turn over and up.)

 

“Someday you will tell me where the diamonds are,” Morgoth says. “And someday you will wish that you had treated better with me today. We are both of us gentleman, but you would rather be a Feanorian, and an outlaw, is that not right?”

Maedhros keeps his eyes down. He calls it defiance, but Morgoth would call it submission, and Maedhros still persists in it. Would Athair blame him, after—after—

(The hollow of his eye stings.)

 

“Farewell to these glad hours,” Morgoth says, almost sharply, but Maedhros has no time to ponder his tone, for the man and his long black coattails swoop to the door.

_A harder path..._

“Mairon!” Morgoth raps his knuckles, and the door opens to reveal no guards at all—only the skeletal slant of Mairon’s waiting form, his face as hide-tight as it was when he stooped over Maedhros with a knife hours ago, slicing only through hair rather than flesh.

“Have you taken what you need?” Mairon asks, near enough that Maedhros can vaguely smell the oil and arsenic of fur still hanging around him. The pupils of Mairon’s eyes are hollow pinpoints.

“Not quite,” Morgoth says, turning to show the blemish on his cheek. “Not since our guest decided to try his hand at rebellion.”

Mairon hisses, but he has learned his lessons too, it seems. He makes no move, though his jaw creaks. “Leave him with me.”

“He will be yours within the hour,” Morgoth says, “since we desire information—and you, dear boy, are a master of your craft.” This, with a fond smile at Mairon, whose lips twitch and peel back in return.

“But first?” Mairon asks, anticipating the question that Maedhros will not ask himself.

_Six was the number of your brothers..._

“There are a few unpaid debts,” Morgoth says, his full attention favoring Maedhros again. “Teeth. Nails.” He taps his lips with straight fingers. “One of each, I think. To start us off.”

Maedhros counts nothing. Maedhros’s heart hammers in his breast.

And Mairon’s smile is a fierce and awful thing, like something burning. With probing fingers, he reaches into his broad belt. There is a pair of pliers tucked in the leather folds.

Cold sweat gathers on Maedhros’s skin. He shivers, and he knows they both see it. This makes it worse than the heartbeat.

They will take him piece by piece, slowly and surely and cruelly—and already, they have seen him weep. They have seen him shudder.

“One last choice, Maitimo,” Morgoth purrs. “One last step on the path you cast aside, forsaking my gentler company for lies and a failed son’s fervor.” He moves aside, too sinuous to be hulking, so that Mairon can take his place.

Maedhros steels himself with what little he has left.

 

_Where does strength come from, Grandfather?_

_From God._

_But we cannot see God._

_Your father has stepped from the room a moment, little Maitimo_ — _yet you trust he will return, do you not?_

_Yes._

_That is God’s strength in you, and your strength as you make it. Later, you will learn to call it_ faith _._

 

Mairon’s black-gloved fingers grip, iron-hard, around Maedhros’s chin, but teeth lock powerfully and Maedhros does not give in.

“A choice?” Mairon seems irritated, though he covers it quickly enough. “What is his _choice_?”

“Maedhros, my lad.” Morgoth’s voice folds even, reasonable. “Let me make plain. I _will_ have a tooth from you. Indeed, you owe me two by your own efforts—but I count only the folly which wounded me. If you fight this, I will simply have Mairon crush your jaw and pluck out all thirty.” He pauses, possibly for effect, possibly to savor what must be the look on Maedhros’s face, and adds, “Or you can open your mouth when you are told, and lose one.”

 

Maedhros opens his mouth.


	5. love war, dread many things

_It is not unheard of for apprentices to attend their masters’ exhibitions, but it_ is _a little unheard of for Dr. Olorin to be invited to such affairs at all. So Fingon says, and Maedhros considers him the authority on the subject._

_He remembers—of course he remembers—when Fingon’s tenure with Dr. Olorin began. It was not long before Maedhros broke his own heart and a good portion of his reputation; not long at all. Dr. Olorin is a lynx-eyed, kind-hearted rebel of a man, the sort that Maedhros always half expects Athair to befriend._

_Athair did take an interest in Dr. Olorin, as it turned out, but only in his work. Ever since Fingon made plain to the family at large that he would be a doctor in his own way (not in his father’s), Athair followed his studies with pointed curiosity._

_That interest waned, perhaps, as Athair and Fingolfin drew near their breaking point. Surely it had faded by the time of Grandfather’s death, and in the lost months thereafter. Maedhros can no more blame Athair for his distraction than he can be certain in his initial judgment as to the purity of Athair’s motives._

It has long been unwise for you to think for yourself.

_“Grandfather vowed he’d see me elevated to fame and fortune one day, no matter how I learned my trade,” Fingon told him with a shy grin, the day the New York exhibit was announced. The event was (allegedly) to celebrate science and medicine, and some people (Uncle Finarfin) thought it a brazen attempt to surpass the Great Exhibition of London, which would open later in the year._

_The Great Exhibition had no small appeal for those on the western shore of the ocean; Dickens and Darwin and even Samuel Colt were rumored to be in attendance. Maedhros mentioned this last name to Athair, and Athair’s eyes flashed keenly, but he said nothing of sending his sons to England._

_Maedhros had not truly expected him to._

_“You will come?”_

_Why is Fingon so reticent, still? Where is his easy trust of a time past?_

_(Maedhros has a tendency to hope these things healed before they are.)_

_“Yes, of course I’ll come,” he promises. Finrod’s letter—the first in a long while—says he shall arrive by mid-April, May at the latest. Maglor is ever engrossed by music and Annabella. Turgon has never been as loyal to Fingon’s trials and triumphs as he should. Maedhros will stand in their place; in all their places._

_It is a simple enough task._

_He takes his best hat and cane and a hefty coin-purse with him, for Fingon must be properly feted afterwards. Washington Square bustles with dozens of men in dull doctor frockcoats and hats that Maedhros believes to have been last employed as actual stove-pipes. He himself is in wine-red wool, for it_ is _February._

_The sky is striped with thin cold clouds. Cloud-grey, too, is the neo-Gothic structure that looms at the far side of the square._

_Fingon might have attended here, if Fingon was given to tracking appointed paths._

_Maedhros weaves through the  chattering swarm, glancing swiftly at his pocketwatch. He is not exactly late._

_He climbs the steps and passes within. The parquet floor is streaked with winter grime; the chorus of voices is cathedral-hushed by the high ceilings._

_“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Maedhros says pleasantly, to a woman in a fur-banded pardessus. She looks as if she knows where she is and where she is going. “Can you tell me if the medical exhibit is in the west wing or the east?”_

_“The west,” she says, smiling with a flutter of long lashes over wide, dark eyes, and Maedhros is a little_ —diverted— _for a moment, until he looks over her shoulder..._

_And sees._

_Maedhros dreamed of_ him _as a boy, and even now...there are nights. But what have nights mattered when Athair’s directive was a clear and constant one? Maedhros was to keep watch, to tell Athair of any whisper or rumor._

_For years, there was—mercifully—none._

_And then:_ Manwe let him out _, Athair said. Said with eyes too red, voice too hoarse._ He did this. That bullet was his.

(How many bullets.)

 _Maedhros saw his face in newspapers, from time to time. They were old pictures in scandal rags, but_ he _had eyes that...eyes that were enough._

_And now this is no daguerreotyped print. This is no woodcut reproduction._

_This is Melkor Bauglir, moving stormcloud-vast, towards him._

_Maedhros runs. Which is to say: he moves quickly and quietly, eyes never leaving the hunter who does not yet know he is hunting. Maedhros slips into darkness, and waits._

_He spends what may be an hour or half an hour, back against the door of some abandoned clerk’s hideyhole, eyes screwed shut and hands clenched._

_Bauglir didn't see him. Didn't find him. Didn't—_

 

How many bullets against red earth and black sky?

How many

bullets

 

More than a year is gone.

 

“ _Nitrous oxide_ ,” Fingon says, and if the corners of his face flicker in and out, Maedhros is too tired to notice. This is not the exhibition. It is just another memory, and so at least he’s heard the conversation before. He knows what to say next, when Fingon is finished talking. “ _It’s going to change everything—even people’s fears. They hide from the very hands that can save them, and all because of pain—_ ”

Maedhros doesn’t remember what nitrous oxide is, or what it does.

“ _Who discovered it?_ ” he asks, because that’s the sort of thing he asks (or used to ask), questions that make Fingon’s eyes light up and his hands begin to flutter as he talks.

“ _A dentist."_

Oh.

_Pain._

Coming out of the dark.

 _Open your mouth, there’s a hole in your mouth, there’s blood, so much blood, in your mouth_ —

He retches, but his body cannot move as it wishes, and he is reduced to jerking against new restraints and spitting old blood and _oh, God,_ are those fragments of tooth? Of bone?

White panic seizes him and the pain is a roaring, throbbing ache, and he cannot even _tell_ , with his thick numb tongue, a tongue that tastes of iron, _which tooth it is they took_ —

He swallows (blood) and forces a breath in through his nose. The pain weeps from the howl of his jaw up to ear and temple, banding his forehead, sending him dizzy and dim.

 _No. You can’t_ —

 

Athair is dead and Maedhros will never stop knowing it.

Amrod is dead and Maedhros will never stop wondering whether he was close enough to save him.

Lesser in his family-burdened heart, but not nothing—Jem and Galway join the number, doomed by Maedhros’s failures if not exactly by his hand.

( _The number._ )

(How many bullets.)

If he has opened his eyes, he can see almost nothing. ( _Has_ he opened his eyes?) He sees Maglor, who must have, must have _wept_ in bidding a brother’s hope farewell—

_Come, you coward. How many bullets?_

In a dark swirling moment, lost to the howl in his bones again, he wonders if Maglor wept while Thuringwethil lived, or waited until she was only a body, thinking that her corpse would make another.

In whatever hours he had, between learning the truth and learning it did not matter, he has lost Maglor, too.

( _But what does Maglor look like when he believes his brother dead?_ ) 

_How. Many. Bullets._

— _count,_ Fingon is saying, _Olorin says we must always tell them to count, it gives them a sense of control_ —

Maedhros counts, as he has before, even when he was not very good at counting hours or chances. Six (five?) is the number of his brothers and eight is the number of his cousins—

_And what is the number of your kills?_

 

At the bridge, he lifted his arm as he had a thousand times before, and he pulled the trigger. The gun kicked back; he did not have to reload.

The man fell to the ground with one eye and his nose gone, a hand-print’s worth of gore where features used to be.

Maedhros took no time, no time at all, to see the hot blood burbling.

Then he fired again.

 

(The drinking was to forget. Even before he. Before he, oh, how his mouth _bleeds_.)

 

_How many bullets?_

_What is the number of your kills?_

Better to forget counting and think of Fingon, except he _shouldn’t let himself._

_(He did not only see Fingon, that day. Stood with his back to a door and was late. Always too late.)_

 

There was a boy whose father Maedhros wounded (he _could_ wound, if that was all he set out to do, but he wanted to kill. He _had_ to kill, and need and want had always run the same river for him, oh Christ, a river, oh—).

Maedhros saw the boy, face twisted in panic, reach for his father’s gory arm.

The boy looked nothing like his brothers or Fingon, and if he looked like _himself_ , if he was anything like Maedhros, he deserved no mercy.

(Maedhros let him go.)

 

_Were you afraid he’d kill you?_

_No_ — _not_ deserve—

 

Athair never asked him to kill anyone. Athair killed a man, and Maedhros swore an oath. Athair killed another, and Maedhros strove to outdo him in service _to_ him. What were the targets of Formenos for—what were the studies of bullet and barrel _for,_ if not for seven men?

(So many more than seven.)

Seven, and the eighth to save Celegorm (too late), and then nine, and then twelve, and then seventeen, and he could pretend in a mire of pain and terror that he _does not know,_ but the answer is...

Twenty-five.

More men than he has years.

More men than he will _ever_ have years.

( _Oh, are you still afraid he will kill you?_

_No—not afraid—_

_You’re afraid of something else.)_

 Those men, they were all afraid.

Athair trained him for pain, and Athair trained him for twenty-five bullets. _Athair_.

_He never asked..._

_He did not have to._

Oh, that he might be lost in the fire of his own blood.

(But Fingon would tell him to be calm.)

Fingon would tell the murderer to be calm, if the murderer was dying. Fingon would say that to anyone.  Filthy, sobbing, counting off bullets.

Fingon would _pray_.)

Maedhros closes his mouth, a little. A mouth is all he is (that’s the mercy of pain), and thus no hand that could pull a trigger. No eye that could guide an aim. He closes his mouth and with his swollen, ragged tongue, he prods along the line of his teeth.

The one Mairon seized and cracked—

— _world gone white again, too much for anything else_ —

The back of the left side, lower jaw. A molar.

The nail Mairon took (a sharp cruel pain he barely noticed _then,_ heaving with sobs as he was) was from his right hand.

( _Sobs?_ )

 

_Amrod, you know, is dead. Is that twenty-six?_

 

When Maedhros opens his eyes, truly, the light around him is red. This is not the pale mountain air through the wide windows of Morgoth’s war-room. This is not—Morgoth is not _here_ , for Morgoth is within his immediate line of vision whenever he wakes. Always waiting, always noting, always having words to say.

_Do you know already? His habits? The ways he likes best, to make you afraid?_

Maedhros cannot move, but for swaying. These are the sorts of realizations made when the only other task ahead is not to think at all, but to tremble in terror. He discovers, in a flashing moment, that he is suspended by his hands, arms spread wide, and his ankles are once more bound together, and linked to a ring in the floor.

And it _is_ terror, if only because he recognizes exactly where he is.

No—no, not _here_. But much like it.

Red light, and red heat. He has known such a place since the time he could walk, since Athair (Athair-when-he-had-a-face) lifted him up against a sooty leather apron, and let him see the fires that burned hot enough to bend metal.

Athair held him at a safe distance. The danger of a forge was the one thing Athair understood like others did. It was the one place in which, despite—or perhaps because of—his genius, he was as steady as a lesser man. Athair put Maedhros’s hands to hammers. Athair shielded him from sparks.

Athair _trained_...

But this is not Athair’s forge.

The heat is all around him _—_ back and chest and arms and legs. He strains his protesting neck, and discovers with crawling horror that his trousers and boots have both been taken from him, leaving him in nothing but his smallclothes.

Maedhros gnaws hard on his lip.

They must have drugged him again. Or maybe he fainted; maybe they did not need to rely on anything but his own weakness.

Hands must have touched him. Arms must have held him.

 _Don’t think of that._ Fingon again.

He doesn’t—he mustn’t think of Fingon. He is a killer. He has tormented himself over drunkenness, over his repeated sins of the flesh. He has thought of himself as _traitor_ —to Mother, and Fingon, and Fingolfin, and Finrod, and long ago to Esther. Perhaps he has even owned himself a traitor to his brothers, a failure before Athair.

But _..Twenty-five men._

He did it gladly. That must have been gladness; the quickness of it. The sureness. The way his shoulders caught and held the thrust of each shot, expecting.

 _Wanting. You wanted death, and you found it_ —more times than years.

 

_You know how many bullets. Now think._

 

He’s still alone, or he isn’t. He’s still alone, and that means Athair has more commands for him—every word and every rumor, _think, Maedhros, you’re not a child._

A killer can’t be a child. That is how he learned to be a man.

The red light is very bright and very quiet. When a forge is waiting, there is little sound beyond the crackle of wood burning.

 

_Hold the hammer firmly, Maedhros._

 

He reaches for Athair, Athair who led and taught him, Athair who _never asked_ and yet who _needed_ —

“You must wonder,” Mairon says, from behind him, “What I am going to do first.”

Maedhros stiffens, and the manacles at his wrists clank. A sign of fear, and therefore, failure. He sees that written on Mairon’s still face when the man steps into view.

He has removed his heavy furs and his outer coat, and he wears a leather apron over his dark vest and breeches.

There is something in his hand.

Maedhros remembers, for though his head hurts now for many reasons (hunger not least of all, poison not least of all, blunted blows not least of all), it is working—he is thinking, just as Athair taught him. Back, back, to a cool, dark forest, where even living things seemed dead.  He remembers hands uplifted, as he ordered, and the sight of faint, familiar burns.

The thing in Mairon’s hand is a blunt-ended iron, such as those Orome used to mark his cattle’s ears.

It is heated bright as blood.

His brothers—his smallest brother, whose tears he dried, whose scraped knees he dressed—do not (did not) deserve the cruel justice of this wild land, of these monsters. This was not what Athair meant for  them to find in west, but at least Maedhros has taken a sinner’s comfort in the knowledge that _he_ has earned the suffering of demon-hooks and claws of hell, even before he descends there.

But to be branded...

(He mewled over a lost tooth when Mairon freed his right hand from its shackle, and lost his final chance.)

(He wants to cry for his mother.)

Mairon inspects the iron in his hands, before his gaze glides back to Maedhros. Mairon does not look angry. He does not have to; the rattling rage is not all there is, and Maedhros should have known that, because he saw the silence first. Mairon looks much as he did in moonlight—stepping out of darkness, violence coiled amid shifting scales, a matter of weight and time. He looks like something that comes after being human.

With so much skin exposed, Maedhros can feel the heat of it, amidst the other heats. This would— _sear._

He tries to curl fingers to palm. Tries to be only a mouth, only one pain and no other fear. All this is difficult to accomplish.

Mairon smiles.

Maedhros holds his whole body still, tense, _waiting_.

“Not yet,” Mairon says, soft yet distinct, and he turns away to lay the iron beside several others, cooling on a black grate.

Maedhros forces down a breath. He reached for Athair, just before Mairon spoke the first time, but now Athair is really gone.

 

 _Healing is a strange business,_ Fingon says. Fingon is even brighter than Athair, white flame quite unlike panic, in this smoke-black space. _I had to re-break a bone today, to set it right. I hated to do it, but I would have hated more to see the man made a cripple._

(Stop.) 

He shouldn’t let himself think of Fingon.

(It is only that he is so afraid.)

 

“Tell me about yourself, cur,” Mairon commands, not turning from the workbench. His hands flit through irons and blades, setting them aside and holding them to the light of red-gold globes that hang, as Maedhros does, from hooks above.

Maedhros is not sure he _could_ speak, much. His face feels crooked with swelling.

Mairon turns, pale hair spilling over his shoulders.

Maedhros _can_ make Mairon angry enough to kill him, he is sure of it, but he has not yet decided if that is victory.

(That _is_ what they want from him, isn’t it?)

“You expect,” Mairon says, linking long, slender fingers together—a craftsman’s fingers—“A swift punishment. Brutality.”

Maedhros swallows against the howl.

“You should expect that,” Mairon says. He does not smile, now. “That is what will happen to you. Only, it will not be swift.”

To clench his jaw as he wishes to would worry the sore socket where the tooth used to be.

“The requests for your _knowledge_ …” Mairon has not moved an inch from his serene pose, nor tilted his expression the barest centimeter since Maedhros defied him in silence, and yet Maedhros feels that he must not look away. “Are many. The pathway to your father’s secret mine. The formulae for his poor creations. And of course—” This smile, a slow wide one, makes him appear horribly young, as though he learned the grimace as a child, and did not temper it with time. “Where we can find Bauglir’s slave. Rumil is his name. You know him? You know those marks upon his neck?”

Maedhros sees that the slender hands are shaking, very slightly. Maedhros knows that Rumil may be dead, and almost wishes, for his sake, that he _is._

“You know them,” Mairon hisses. “They are _mine_. My work.”

Still, Maedhros is mute.

“Bauglir told me you were strong.” He flings his hands apart, and steps closer, closer, closer. He does not invade and touch as Morgoth does, seeking some deeper understanding—he only _looms_ , predator over prey.  “Tell me of your strength, then. I have already felt you beg, and bleed, over a price you set yourself.”

The price of fighting. A losing fight. 

“From one killer to another,” Mairon says, “I would have taken much, much more than a tooth.”

Maedhros has been running from the pain. Running for Mother, and Fingon, and the way that they are ever strong and steady for one who should have protected _them_. But this is not his duty.

(How many bullets _was never a question to you._ )

“Tell me why you kill,” Mairon whispers. If there is anger in the blood-glow, it hangs around him. It is not in him, yet.

 _Duty._ Duty was the bullets and the faces blasted open and the screams and _Your only regret is that you did not kill_ more _?_

_Yes. That is my only regret._

Athair told him his duty and Maedhros must perform it, if he is to weather the loss of more than a tooth. With the effort a knot between ribs, he reminds himself of Athair’s lessons, and he clenches his teeth, even though that makes fresh blood and fresh agony mingle together. Maedhros waits, and Mairon waits, and then Maedhros slurs, around bruised lips and tongue,

“I will tell you nothing.”

 _Nothing_ is many things, and a long time. It deserves to be counted in two oaths, Athair’s last breath, and the number of brothers who fought to be held in Maedhros’s arms— _nothing, nothing_ , for none of these will ever come again.

Maedhros deserves only to count it in bullets.

“You are a dog to me,” Mairon says, with the same odd calm. When he shrugs, it is an elegant gesture, even in his blacksmith’s apron. “I want to know how and why a dog kills.”

Maedhros thrust him to his knees, Maedhros plunged him into the mud, Maedhros’s name sent Thuringwethil to her death.

(Yet Mairon does not look angry.)

“Alas,” Mairon adds. “A dog only yelps when beaten.” He is unfastening something at his belt. Maedhros does not know what it is, at first, and then—

—he had, for a moment, _preferred_ the open air at his back rather than the rough wood against which Morgoth had him pinned like a butterfly.

Now, he understands his mistake.

Mairon unfurls the braided whip in his hands, inspecting it as if he has never seen it before. Mairon says,

“Even if you revealed everything to me today, still I would delight in this.”

Maedhros can do nothing. Maedhros, who has never been whipped.

“I hear you prize your beauty,” Mairon says flatly. “I have often heard it prized _to_ me. Your face I would ruin further, but other than seeing you sheared like a sheep and less a tooth, I shall not touch it. I exact Bauglir’s desires, Feanorian, and your face belongs to him. The rest of you—” He lets the length of the whip dangle from his hand, limp and yet half-living, and then he strikes the butt against Maedhros’s chest. “The rest of you belongs to me.”

 _Twenty-five_ , Maedhros supposes, can be counted in lashes too.

“Then whose...” Maedhros asks thickly, “Whose cur are you?”

Mairon moves quickly, and the whip snaps its first strike, leaving a fiery welt from shoulder to hip. Maedhros has nothing to hold, nothing to tighten but his jaw.

One. _The man at the bridge with no eye and no nose and—_

Two. _He was fair-haired, they were all—all very fair-haired, they were—he was_

Three.

 

 _“Everyone cries,”_ Fingon says, spreading a fragrant salve on Argon’s wasp-sting. “ _There’s no shame in it._ ”

Fingon is not here. Fingon can’t be here, for a killer.

 

Four. _You shot this one in the chest, it was clean but he_ —make no sound, dear God, make no sound.

 

(He loses count long before twenty-five.)

 

It took him only a few days, to become fully a coward. To forget grief he believed absolute; to forget anything but a slavering desire to beg for mercy.

The whip cracks, and he writhes, and it does no good. The whip cracks, and his flesh is made meat of, and there is _nothing,_ not even Fingon, not even his brothers, not even gratitude that they are not here in his stead. 

Maedhros cannot tell if the ring and scream is in his ears or leaving his tortured throat.

He cannot _tell._

There is the cherry red, floating in front of his eyes, there it is, darkening and cooling, yet his back is still seared to white heat.

When there is no sound left in him, Mairon drifts into view again, drinking darkly of the red light.

Mairon’s hands are much, much redder than the light.

“You think I am a dog called to heel,” Mairon echoes, nose flaring as if he catches a scent. “In fact, what you have learned is that I am _patient_.” He lifts his hand and smears the blood down his cheeks. He stares at Maedhros for a long time, longer than Maedhros’s watered eyes can watch.

Then Mairon leaves him there.

 

_What use_

_second sight?_

 

The scars, the weeping wounds, must stretch from nape to waist.

( _Think of them marked forever._ )

The scar at his throat is nothing at all.

( _Nothing_.)

He sags against the iron clamps at his wrists, but the shift in weight is too much. A  spasm overcomes him and he twitches and thrashes and—

 _“I’ve really missed you,”_ Fingon says, and he is not a doctor, not today, on the morning of Grandfather’s funeral. He is reaching for Maedhros’s hand, drawing him up from the wet, remorseful earth. _“And now I have to miss him forever, and I didn’t want us to meet again like this—”_

Grandfather Finwe is dead, and Athair is dead, and Amrod is dead, and Fingon—well. Maedhros lost the right, long ago, to know what or where Fingon is.

But he is weak, and he hurts too much for that to matter.

“ _Sorry,_ ” he whispers, and his lips move, but surely no words can be heard. Surely his voice is too spent for that. “ _So sorry._ ”

“Speak up, my boy,” Morgoth says, richly amused. “I can scarcely hear you.” He must have entered on silent feet, or perhaps Maedhros has strained his ears with his own cries and now can hear nothing else. He opens his eyes again, crusted with salt and sweat, and flinches back from Morgoth’s outstretched hand, so near his cheek.

Morgoth purses his lips.

“Mairon has begun to take you apart,” he says sadly. “I have come to put you back together again.”

There are other footsteps. Maedhros hears them like drops in a bucket, far and foreign.

“Wait,” Morgoth orders. “Let me see to his back first.”

He circles Maedhros, touching him as he does so, one hand on his twisted arm, just past the shoulder. A clamped hold against unbroken skin, possessing it.

Then Morgoth lays his fingers against the gouges across Maedhros’s spine.

When Maedhros has stopped thrashing once again, with effort drawn not from memories or training but from exhaustion itself, Morgoth draws away his hand.

“Too many,” he says, shaking his head as he loops back again. “He did not stop at bruising you, lad. You’re slick with scarlet.”

(Maedhros has always hated scars.)

“Fetch something to wash it away,” Morgoth directs, with a wave of his crimson hand. From the pocket of his tailcoat he draws forth a flask. Maedhros’s own. Fingon gave it to him, for holy water—Maedhros was sure that it was half a joke, at the time.

_Good to have with you, in a pinch._

His lips move, but no word comes. For that he is glad; he must not beg no matter how much he wants to. Better to be silent, better even to cry out in pain, than to beg.

“Yes, it is whiskey.” Morgoth’s eyes glitter. “Now, else I let them soak your wounds with brine, how shall you have it? On you or in you?”

Maedhros shudders and gasps. ( _Beg._ )  He has not eaten since he came here—why is he not dead? He has barely drunk, either. The poisoned water, in the study and in the few unwilling sips from Gothmog’s waterskin—that is all. His mouth is bloated and raw.

How long does it take a man to die?

How long should it take, for less than a man?

 

 _“Just a little,”_ Grandfather Finwe says. _“You are fifteen, and a swallow of brandy will do you no harm.”_

 _“What will it taste like?”_ Maedhros asks, and he is _skeptical_ (that is the jest of it, afterwards), but he likes the warmth of it at once.

(That is how it begins.)

 

“You want a drink, don’t you?” Morgoth urges, all understanding, and Maedhros...

... _nods,_ little more than a thrust of his head up and down.

(Is that the same as begging? Even a moment ago, he told himself to be strong—)

Morgoth raises the flask to his mouth. Maedhros drags at it desperately, but Morgoth pulls it away and gently, very gently, reaches for Maedhros’s swollen jaw.

“Greed,” he murmurs, “Is just another sin.” His fingers harden, and tighten, and Maedhros’s head is pitched back, so that his face is upturned and his eyes flutter shut like wings and his mouth is hot with the same fire as his bleeding shoulders.

Morgoth empties the flask over his forehead.

This is how one is baptized, and this is how priests are marked with sacred chrism, and this is how Maedhros drinks—choking, begging, lapping at his lips for any drops he can catch on his tongue.

 _“I’m thinking of becoming a priest,_ ” Fingon says. _“What do you think?”_

(Fingon is twelve.)

“You know, and I know,” Morgoth says, “What you deserve.”

 

(He can see the face of every man he killed. They’re not a blur at all.)

 

“ _Athair,_ ” Athair cried, the letter falling from his hand, and Maedhros _knew_ , and Mother knew also, but there was nothing they could do. Maedhros’s first thought was not what it should have been. His first thought was for himself.

When he pulled the trigger, each time...

He did not do it for himself. Only: that does not matter. It does not matter because he saved no brothers. It does not matter because Athair and Amrod, like Grandfather Finwe, are dead.

 

“Brine the wounds,” Morgoth orders. “Then bandage them. No infection, for this one.”

 _“Why do you want to be a priest?”_ Maedhros speaks ( _spoke_ , it was a long time ago, Fingon is no longer twelve) as if he himself has never considered the idea. Indeed he used to think of it, when he served at Mass, and when he planted the prayer garden with Mother, and when—

The splash is cold at first, against his back.

Then it, too, burns.

 

(Pain is not measured by a length of rope, for ropes can be let go. Pain is not measured by an arc of heat, for fire eventually yields ashes.)

(Pain is a mountain, and the climb never ends…

Unless you jump.)

 

 _“I am absolutely furious at you,”_ Fingon says.

 _“Why? Because that coat is cut too large, and you’re swimming in it?”_ Maedhros laughs, or at least, he thinks he does, but he has forgotten how to make his lungs comply. His lungs are just out of reach. Fuzzy, faded, like the edges of Fingon’s face.

 _Glowing. Everything is_ —

It doesn’t matter.

 _“It’s your coat,”_ Fingon explains, picking at the cuffs. _“Someone had to take it. There’s a letter in the pocket, though. You never finished writing it.”_

_“Never...”_

_“You could have told me what frightened you. You always could have told me.”_ The coat grows bigger, somehow. Fingon looks so young.

_“It wasn’t mine to tell.”_

_“Wasn’t it? Doesn’t your fear belong to you? Doesn’t anything?”_

_“Shit.”_ Maedhros sighs. Fingon is too... _knowing_. _“I’m making this up, aren’t I? It’s all a silly dream.”_

 _“Yes, well.”_ Fingon’s face pinches. _“It’s me. I wouldn’t want to leave you…there.”_

Maedhros has to squint to see his face, now. _“You don’t even know where I am.”_

 _“I don’t,”_ Fingon agrees. There’s nothing of a liar in Fingon, even like this. _“That’s because you left me.”_

 

The smell is sharp and startling, and somehow cruel. Maedhros wants nothing more than to get away from it, but doing so makes his back, and what skin is left on it, shriek with new anguish.

“You are rather prone to fainting,” Morgoth observes, tucking the little black bottle in his sleeve. “How _did_ you make it all this way, with such a fragile constitution?”

“Kill me,” Maedhros spits clumsily. His lips don’t form the words right. “Coward.”

Morgoth laughs. “If _you_ weren’t a coward,” he answers. “I would.”

Maedhros can feel tears smarting in his eyes. They do not fall, but only because his eyes are rimed and dry.

In the pause, in the space left by Morgoth’s laughter, hands move against his body again. Maedhros shakes and cringes despite himself. That their touch is rough only and not brutal is of no consequence; the pain is no less sharp.

Dimly, he determines that the silent guards are wrapping him in bandages crossing from back to chest, wound around his waist.

Morgoth stands aside and smiles. “You wonder at my mercy?”

(He begged. He did. He knows he did.)

“Would you pretend that it is not? Would you lash at me with that sluggish tongue? _Lash_ is a poor choice of words, I own...and _mercy_ may be, to you. But gifts are gifts, Maitimo. Even Annatar knows that.”

Maedhros is a fool, and is goaded to answering. _Where is he?_ he demands, or tries to. A hacking cough makes him whine in his throat with animal hurt instead.

“Poor devil,” says Morgoth sweetly. He is such a great, tall man that to Maedhros’s fevered sight, he seems to shut out all the rest of the forge. “Left striped with blood and dangling like a broken toy.”

His fingers press Maedhros’s cheek again. “If you want to weep, I shall tell no one.”

Maedhros’s teeth are chattering; he does not try to speak again. The pressure against his swollen face is needle-sharp.

“This was a lesson,” Morgoth explains, in a maddeningly reasonable tone. The men have disappeared, their task finished. “Mairon was under instructions, I assure you. He had his fill for today, showing you your place in our world.” A wracking shudder rocks Maedhros from the waist as those loathsome hands settle firmly on his shoulders. “You need not be punished again today. I will keep you well. Your wounds are dressed. You will be fed. What more could you ask for, than this kindness? And it _is_ kindness, Maedhros, no matter how much of it stems from my supposed black heart. Pus and fever, gangrene and rot—these are very ugly things. My methods are not, perhaps, as tender as one might wish—but do you not see their purpose? Do you not see _my_ purpose?”

To move, to struggle under that touch, will only hurt him more. Black spots are crowding in his eyes, but he can—he can see that now.

“Do not forget, you are not my prisoner,” Morgoth tells him. “You are my prize.” He pats Maedhros on the cheek, very carefully, so that his fingers strike hardest against the stiff swelling.

Maedhros swallows another whine. _Athair. Athair, what now?_

(He only wants Fingon.)

“Athair?” Morgoth grins. “Oh, we call for Feanor again, do we? Your father is dead. What place has he in the future?”

Maedhros shuts his eyes. Let them pluck out the lids, to stop him.

Morgoth is undeterred. In the blackness, there comes a sound of clattering metal. “So. You did not speak of secrets today. We will not quarrel over it.”

There is an interminable pause.

“Stay with me, Maitimo. Stay with me.” The sharp scent again. Maedhros gasps. Morgoth’s face comes sharper into focus, a pale moon, and he has taken something from Mairon’s workbench, for silver gleams in his lifted hands. “My, my. This is a pretty piece of work.”

Maedhros startles back.

It is silver, and hung with leather straps, shaped like a jaw.

Morgoth tucks it against his side and lifts a key also—or at least, Maedhros thinks it is a key. When the world blurs this time, it is not with weariness. Not from dreaming.

(He is not dreaming.)

“I must take precautions,” Morgoth says, “Whenever you have a fighting chance.”  He grins, and the angry scabbing lines on his cheek wrinkle and wave. “Before I see you unchained and taken down, I must make use of Mairon’s craft to guard against those gnashing teeth of yours.”

Gnashing teeth? Maedhros can hardly force his lips to open, much less—

(One of the bullets, two months past, late in the night, shattered teeth and skull together. His bullet.)

“You have learned your lesson?”

He nods.

( _You are begging._ )

(Athair throws up his hands in disgust, and the door will slam behind him, Maedhros _knows_ it, and Maedhros runs after him, crying, _Please, Athair, I can do it, I am not afraid_.)

(Athair hands him a gun and bids him fire.)

(Athair _has given him a gun long ago_ and bids him guard.)

(What else could Athair mean?)

Morgoth raises the muzzle higher, to the level of Maedhros’s eyes. It has a bit like a horse’s bit, knife-sharp at the edges. Morgoth holds it there for a long moment, and then returns it to its corner of the bench. “I shall trust you, then.” He sounds almost jovial. “Murphy! Goor! Come in and take him.”

 _“If I was there, I’d kill them,”_ Fingon says.

Fingon really isn’t supposed to be here, but Maedhros is too tired to stop him now. Fingon is the only safety left, for a murderer. _“You’ve never killed anyone_.”

The door opens, and the last time a door opened and Maedhros noticed it, it was Mairon, come to collect on a debt. But these are only the shadows who drenched and bandaged him moments (hours?) ago. One of the men takes the key from Morgoth’s milky palm, and together they set to work, unlocking the cuffs at Maedhros’s wrists and ankles. He has only a breath of time with his hands unbound, but it is not the sight of the steel-trap muzzle that stops him fighting—it is the sensation of splitting and tearing beneath the stiff bandages that cover him.

His jerking arms are held fast as his hands are shackled together, and then his ankles are locked in the linked manacles, and then Morgoth sets that key, too, on Mairon’s bench.

“So ends this day,” Morgoth says. “Take him to his cell.”

 

_“Where were you?” Fingon asks, and then—“Maedhros, are you well?”_

_In the great hall, drab-clad students are already helping to cart the tables and placards away. The throng is thinning._

_Fingon is frowning, but not with disappointment. Not with the disappointment he has earned. His warm hand circles Maedhros's trembling wrist, all doctor practicality, as if to find a pulse._

The monster, _Maedhros wants to say._ He almost had me. I could see his eyes, I could hear his voice in my head, I remember his hands _—_ _but it would do no good to say any of this to Fingon._

_"Please forgive me," he mumbles, not for the first time. (Likely, not for the last.) "I—I have missed it, haven't I? Your work."_

_"No matter, cousin. You look as if you've seen a ghost." Fingon peers up at him. His best blue coat swims before Maedhros's eyes. Are these tears? "Good Lord, Maitimo—you look as if you_ are _a ghost.  
_

_He will have to tell Athair. Athair, who—who_  swears  _that it was Bauglir whose bullet killed Grandfather. Athair, who always asks for news._

_"I am quite well," Maedhros says, distractedly. He isn't ever grateful enough for Fingon, for what Fingon does._

_For the way that Fingon will not leave him, even when the world blurs._

_"But you have to go?" Fingon must be able to tell this, from the way that Maedhros tugs his hand away._

_"I'm afraid I must."_

_It is a great pity, to leave Fingon and his carefully arranged brown tincture bottles, his copperplate annotations. His treatise on disinfection, of which he is so proud. All of this, Maedhros could love for him. But Maedhros's hands will not cease their shaking._

_The storm passed close; the monster—_

 

With enough bullets, the monster found him in the end.


	6. only a small and passing thing, this shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is quite graphic. FYI.

Maedhros does not choose the day he dies, but he knows it for how it begins. Two of Bauglir’s men are at his door when his morning meal is accustomed to arrive, and he submits to having his hands and ankles shackled in the usual manner, all the while breathing deeply in his chest.

They do not speak to him. They speak to each other, laughing a little at how he hangs his head and keeps his lips pressed shut.

 _Broken,_ says one. _A thrashing will do that._

Maedhros does not fight them; he will fight no one who does not intend to kill him.

He _is_ grateful to be spared a last meal.

There is no blood in his mouth, though there remains a sharp, tender mass of raw flesh where his tooth was. His jaw is slanted uneven from the swelling. There is a crust of blood at the left corner of his lips, and an angry scab on his arm from the long-ago slash of Mairon’s hunting knife. There are other marks, too, but all are little wounds.

What is (would be) of chief concern is his flogged back. That, of course, is stiff and bruised and barely beginning to heal. Men like the men who lead him now changed the bandages daily during the first three days, and freshly brined the lacerated welts. He could barely move from the pain even before they stretched him prone on the floor of his cell. His limbs were pinned down, that he might not writhe away from the stinging application.

At those times, he may have cried out or swallowed down cries; he cannot quite remember.

Afterwards, he trembled and convulsed and even vomited. He remembers _that_. He remembers it because each time he emptied his stomach, another meal was brought for him to eat.

Having learned his lessons well, having been _fed_ , he lifted every bowl to his lips as soon as he was rightly able. Tears and blood and bile; they were one on his tongue. He ate. He vomited. He ate again.

But Maedhros is going to die today.

The bandages and brine were agony. The gruel and bile were agony. He would not call those days survival. He would not call _comfort_ the blanket and rough trousers he was given, heavy and foul with Bauglir’s expectant demands. They were warmth in this cold subterranean place, yes, but not comfort.

In his anger, Bauglir has taken them away again.

(This day dawned different, and the same.)

Maedhros is broken, perhaps, in that he finds he is not ashamed of his near-nakedness, nor even of the angry mass of wounds that disfigure the once smooth plane of his shoulders, his hips. He is to be given to Mairon, and Mairon will kill him.

Maedhros will see to that.

(No healing, this past stretch of time, but he began to count days. To measure them by food and water and the question a grim, blunt-faced guard asked at each brutal mealtime.

_Answer?_

He was always silent. No one struck him.

They did not have to.

 _Answer?_ )

He shuts his eyes, though the door of his cell is open and he must walk through it. His last interview with Bauglir was horror itself, but only because Maedhros is (was, soon will be gone) a coward, and Bauglir has found and used each fragile weakness.

 _Morgoth_. Athair called him Morgoth, but Maedhros must remember—on this, his last day—that Bauglir is only a man.

Men do not want to die.

That is his gamble.

Bauglir will not do it quickly enough; might not do it at all. Those are the stakes. The chill draft down the long rough passage and the coarse stones beneath his sore feet are only distant pains. He keeps his head down; he waits.

“Back to the butcher,” one of his guard says, prodding him between the shoulderblades.

Maedhros arches and gasps, and the other guard says something he doesn’t even hear.

Then it is past, _another moment past_ , and he breathes.

There was a long night. He did not pray. The last of _him_ , of Maitimo, _wanted_ to pray for his brothers—but what need would they have for his prayers? He bid farewell to them, instead: the twins first, recalling shaky steps and warm, small hands. Then Curufin, who is most like Athair, most in the fact that Maedhros loves him more (surely) than he is loved. Next Caranthir, who hurt rather dreadfully, and Celegorm, who is strongest, and—

Maglor last of all.

He was weeping into his dirty hands by that time, but quietly, as if the walls had ears. Maglor made him sob against all wisdom, until he thought his back might split and bleed again. His knees made a poor pillow for his damp cheeks, but that, again, was Maglor: enough to bring a murderer to tears.

Maedhros indulged himself last night. He did not think of the men he killed; at least not more than a whisper. He would die for them and for others on the morrow, he knew. He would die and be damned and it would be a penalty just as surely as if a noose had been placed round his neck at Ulmo’s Bridge.

( _How do you plead?_ )

(He doesn’t.)

Mother was forbidden him; he could neither permit himself to pray to nor for her, after he had failed her so utterly in his fevered confusion. After Mairon—

But Mairon is going to kill him, he soothes himself. Mairon is going to do what Bauglir will not, is going to carve him to bits. And Maedhros shall be weak and a coward, no doubt screaming, no doubt begging, but then he shall die.

He breathes. Deep, deep in his chest.

Death is sweet and near, nearer than fear in his mind because he has _put it there._

(His hands shake in the shackles anyway. He watches them through half-lidded eyes.)

( _Breathe_.)

Athair is already dead, and Maedhros has failed him in too many ways to count those in which he has _not_ failed him. _Athair_ , he murmured into his arms and knees, last night, after Maglor’s soft memory had drained him, _I cannot rest with you. I cannot go where you go._

There wasn’t time, really, to say goodbye to anyone else.

 _One foot in front of the other_. Maedhros was brought twice along this hall; once last night, for Bauglir’s final parlay; once, three days before that. He was brought to a cold, clean room and examined. A thin grey doctor treated the wounds with something that stung far more than brine—Maedhros bit his tongue bloody—and called him strong.

Despite the flogging, despite too much exhaustion and too little food, _strong_.

 _Back with the others, then?_ the doctor asked Maedhros’s guard. _He’ll have no more need for bandages._

And Maedhros’s guard shook his head, and said, _This is a different one. Special._

Bauglir keeps slaves for his work. This Maedhros gathered and understood, had even guessed before. They cut and cure the ties for the tracks and drag them to load on the carts. Some are sent to work on the railroad itself.

Bauglir told him this. Bauglir did not add what must also be true: fierce lashes and iron collars and meager rations.

What a grace, to die today.

The mountain air does come beneath the ground, a little, but the belching smoke of the forge also rises up in iron-smarting billows. Maedhros knows what forge-heat smells like, would know where he was being taken even if Bauglir had not told him of his fate.

_He will not be gentle with you, Maitimo, and I will not protect you any longer._

Bauglir was angry, to be spurned. To be _injured_. Bauglir is made angry by what he brings upon himself.

_Just a man._

The pain is like a white wall of fire, of molten metal, that Maedhros shall have to thrust his hand through. It will not leave a hand, that fire. It will not leave a sound.

_And then you will die._

Maedhros raises his head, just before they open the heavy door in the darkness, the door he does not even remember.

He has not been here a month. He has not been here (he does not think) half a month.

Which means that Athair is dead—three weeks, and Amrod closer to two, and Grandfather Finwe dead two years.

There are so many people whom Maedhros loved, and loved poorly, and if he cries out today let it be in their names. Let his suffering be repentance, for he cannot be truly sorry, otherwise, for his sins.

Not properly. Not unless forgiveness is the same as being loved.

 _You are a pity_ , said Bauglir, and he was right, and Maedhros let fear rule him.

(He will let fear rule him again, but only when it is too late.)

So. Twenty-five men, twenty-four years, two years, one year, three weeks, two weeks, one night.

All to bid farewell.

Has life been generous?

Is this life anymore?

They were supposed to come west for gold.

(The forge is as red as it ever was.)

(Deeply. Breathing.)

Mairon will string him up by his hands and demand— _answers_ —and Maedhros will say no and more than no, will drive home the nails of dissent until Mairon becomes more animal than man, _which animal are you_ , and then it will begin and then it will end.

Mairon is waiting by the bench. The chains swing from the ceiling; Maedhros has lifted his chin. He is— _Maglor once more I’m sorry Maglor_ —ready.

Fingon is here.

It is right that Fingon is here; Fingon has seen people die before. He stands in the corner, very calm, very not-as-he-would-be, but—

It is right that Fingon is here.

 

 _I am glad to see you_ , Maedhros thinks, letting go of everyone else. _I am ready._

Mairon will tell them to chain his—

“On his knees,” Mairon orders, and the blade of his knife shines in his hand.

 

The delicate flesh on his shoulders shudders and tears, the floor is coal-warm beneath him, the guards have him by the arms.

Mairon’s hard hand, cold almost as steel itself, forces Maedhros’s head downwards until he struggles out of a panic that his mind cannot—

He did not expect, does not _know_ what is happening, and then the blade bites sharply at the back of his neck. First one curving score, hot and horrible and shocking, and then another, and then two straight down, as if to follow the width of his spine.

Maedhros does not even know how he is _counting_ , because the panic is a white wall itself crashing down around him.

At least he does not cry out, for all his tremulous breath. It is not that kind of pain.

“The rack,” Mairon says, gesturing with bloodied fingers. Maedhros can feel the creeping drops down his back. A new sting. Mairon’s eyes glitter as they fall upon him, and—

_You die today, nothing else matters._

_It is alright_ , Fingon says, very clearly, from the other side of the room. _Maedhros, you die today. Nothing else matters._

The guards haul him to his feet. Why do his knees—why do they shake—

 _What did Mairon_ do _?_

There is a rack he does not remember from days ago, days and days that have no meaning now. It is all strips of cold metal fitted together like a grate, and Maedhros is mindful of the flaming forge-fire. Is mindful, suddenly, of the fact that there is more than one way to die.

 _Maitimo, I won’t leave you_ , Fingon says earnestly. The forge-light does not color Fingon’s face. He is pale and resolute and very present, because he understands death.

Maedhros’s neck burns. One of the guards is shaking his head. But they do not laugh; they do not speak. They only obey Mairon and link the cuffs at Maedhros’s wrists to the metal slats, splayed wide. They do the same with his ankles.

This is so that he cannot move. Cannot so much as sway.

 _Precision_ , Fingon says sadly. _He’ll want precision. He’s that sort of monster._

Maedhros knows. Maedhros, old and new wounds smarting against the bite of metal, _knows_.

“Leave us,” Mairon says quietly. When they are gone, he says, gnawing his pale lips as if hungry, as if savoring, “Do you know how I have marked you?”

Maedhros could speak today; could speak yesterday. His mouth is not what it was, but his voice _is_ his own again. He _must_ steady himself.

He must carry out what he came to do. To be.

(Over soon.)

(The blood runs down his spine.)

Mairon wears a long leather vest, his arms bared. He reaches up with one white finger and taps the curving collar. In the light, Maedhros sees only its sable darkness.

“It is my mark,” Mairon says. “A great eye watching, and counting. Till the day you die, Feanorian, you bear my signature upon you. Did I not tell you? That which is not Bauglir’s is mine. And today—” His hand darts out, folding like a sheet of steel around Maedhros’s neck, where broken skin is tender and Maedhros grinds his teeth—

“Today,” Mairon finishes, “He is angry enough to give you to me. Today, I will have my answers.”

 

The flames, leaping, flutter like lashes fit to ring a molten iris. Of course Maedhros can only think of _eyes_ , even while Mairon heats an iron to strawberry glow and his next future careens into the steady-edged present.

(The eye emblazoned on Maedhros’s own flesh is _out of sight_.)

Remember: the whole point is that cowardice is a convulsion; something that may matter in a free dodge, _not_ in a free fall. Remember: Maedhros will not lurch back from the cliff’s edge, will not be _able_ to, if he runs before he leaps.

 _You didn’t know, then._ Fingon is compassionate as he was in—life—but also calmer. _Calm_ and _despair_ are two studies Fingon never mastered. Never tried to master, all through his happy, silver-spun childhood.

Maybe he learned both when he reached the bridge.

However he took the blow, Fingon _must_ have reached the bridge. Maedhros gazes downwards, at the faintly quivering curve of ribs and stomach (his) and admits (so close) that he has thought of Fingon coming to the bridge each day since their leaving it.

Ash on water, blood on dry ground.

Calm, and despair. Fingon would have suffered before he knew the relief of either. The two are only enough for endings.

Back to the hour of death. Mairon has heavy gloves over his hands now. The iron is heated, and heavy, yet he lays it down with scarcely a sound.

 _Precision_.

 _What didn’t I know?_ Maedhros asks Fingon. If it is to distract himself, he has not yet betrayed his purpose. He is bound firmly in place. He cannot escape. Cannot turn more than his beleaguered head, much less turn _back_.

_You didn’t know that leaping would have saved you anything. You didn’t know it was the right time to choose death._

Maedhros is pleased that Fingon understands. Pleased, perhaps, that he is able to _make_ a Fingon who understands. He couldn’t bear argument just now, and that is a weakness but not the kind of weakness that will let him escape. There are beads of sweat gathering in the hollow of his throat. His neck aches and burns and twitches. If he is to die, he must prepare himself for true burning.

Let Fingon understand, then. Maedhros must prepare himself for a brand.

Fear closes his throat for a moment, but he does not need to speak aloud for Fingon.

 _I’ve always been a fool_ , he reminds his cousin-friend gently. Strange, that Fingon should be so pale in the red light. Ought he to change him? To force through the blur of imagination, that rosy glow on Fingon’s cheeks?

 _Maitimo._ (This is where a true Fingon would clench his hands.)

With slender tongs, Mairon stoops over the goals. Something is pinched between them. Maedhros cannot see what.

_You’ll feel it soon enough._

_Don’t be cruel, Fingon. Not you._

_No. You._ But Fingon relents, and smiles, quite encouragingly, from his white-lit corner of the black room. He even clenches his hands.

“Do you recognize it?” Mairon advances, the tongs held up like a twisted crucifix, a ruddy coin in their pincers.

It isn’t a coin.

“You know that I do,” Maedhros says, very evenly. Very calmly.

(Or not calm at all, his heart is beating, his heart is going to be heard in this room, and he isn’t _afraid_ , strictly, but horrified, after all this and all the dead men and all the foul darkness he can still be _horrified_ —)

Red blurs. Red, where once was silver.

 _Now that,_ Fingon points out mournfully. _That, you should have cast into the river as you first intended._

“Your father found a mine,” Mairon says, the words tripping over each other distastefully, as if he is spitting mud through his teeth—and once he was, and once Maedhros could have killed him, or died trying. “Stole it, really. Where is it?”

 _Michael, Prince of Angels. Defender of God._ That is how they used to pray. Like all prayers, it is only a shield cast aside now, one Maedhros cannot afford to take up any longer.

“You’re something of a fool,” Maedhros tells him. His sneer not quite the same, but who’s to know that? His nails bite his palms, which is a gambler’s tell, but he knows Mairon is looking at his face. “Not using what you know.”

“What I _know_?” Mairon is an animal, and a hungry one at that. He will always take the bait.

_Mercy…_

“As if my father told me anything,” Maedhros says. “Really. Be honest, what does your master tell you? He gives you commands instead of confidences.”

Mairon’s nostrils are white, compressed. He says nothing. So. Trying not to be angry. And failing, already, which Maedhros can use.

“All you’re given is scraps. Scraps, but you won’t have even that for him today,” Maedhros murmurs softly. He does not know how much charm his smile has left.

(That does not matter either.)

“He’ll have your screams.” Mairon takes a step closer, and the heat of what he holds is pain-close and very real.

Maedhros fights past his traitorous throat. “He’s had those already. What are a few more? Pitiful.”

That’s how Athair used to say it. _You…are…pitiful_. He never said it to his sons. Did _that_ matter?

(Nothing matters. _Calm_.)

 _Well done_ , Fingon tells him, wringing his hands.

 

Maedhros used to wear his prayer-medal on a chain long enough to hide beneath his shirt. It used to rest a hand’s-length down his sternum, rather near his heart.

As if he remembers that, Mairon presses it there, red-hot, until it sticks.  

 

So much as a finger touched to flame makes one flinch and recoil. So much as a flake of ember, kicked up, will hiss and sting. Maedhros’s whole body jerks away from the wild, searing cruelty, but there is nowhere to go. The gasp wrung out of his throat draws in too much of the taste and stench of burning flesh, and he gags desperately, shaking.

Mairon laughs, rasping, and plucks medal from skin with a rough tug of his tongs.

“That will not be the last.”

 _Oh, Maitimo, breathe. You were doing so well, breathe deeply_ , Fingon urges. _Come now. Each brand is a little closer to death. I know it is very awful—_

 _You don’t know_ , Maedhros snaps. _Fingon, you don’t know at all._

 _Maedhros._ Fingon flickers sternly. He looks like—like Athair, when he does that. Maedhros blinks through the tears swarming his eyes.

_I am sorry._

“Save yourself a little pain,” Mairon tells him, reaching for the glowing iron. “And speak quickly.”

Maedhros breathes. Lifts his head. The burning doesn’t stop, the pain doesn’t stop. It feels as if there is a hole pierced through his chest.

“Your master stole a gem already.” His voice still trembles a little. When he was small, Athair showed him how it was possible to hurt himself so that pain was not an enemy. He has to remember that. His hands close in impotent fists. “Isn’t he satisfied? Is he not occupied with _business_ , too much to care for—”

 

This brand, against the thin pale skin beneath his upper arm, makes him lose hold of—of _everything_. But only for a moment.

 _Jesus_ , Fingon grimaces, tearing at his lower lip with nervous teeth. _That’s horrible_.

The ruined skin comes away with the iron retrieved. The room tilts back and forth. Maedhros is flinging his head from side to side.

 _Steady, Fingon._ His voice doesn’t tremble in his mind. _Steady._

“Why do you hate me?”

“A question like that,” Mairon says, blinking metronome-steady, “Will earn you another reward.”

“As long as I live,” Maedhros says, when he can speak again (this one between the ribs), “I’ll remember the sight of you beaten. Perhaps that is why—”

(This one to the side of his hip, and held there for a good—long—while)

 

 _Please, please_ , sobs Fingon. _Isn’t there another way?_

 _Hush_ , Maedhros answers. The iron skims the hollow of one elbow, but does not press. _You know there isn’t. Don’t—don’t be so cut up about it._

“What good would it do…”

Mairon sets the iron down. “Speak up.”

“Fuck, I’m trying, you bastard. _Fuck_ , you’re not much of a hand at this. Too much—”

 

The skin of his thigh, drawn gently away with whittling turn of a knife…

Fingon _screams_.

 

 _You don’t have to stay_. They’re the hardest words Maedhros has ever spoken. _Fingon, if it hurts you so much, you can—_

God, it tears him open, to offer that. He is a liar, he is lying, he is promising Fingon freedom he will not give. _Cannot_ give.

But Fingon doesn’t make him lie any longer. Fingon comes nearer, and nearer, and when he brushes away the tears it is…it is almost _enough_.

_I’ll stay. Quiet now, Maitimo. Don’t worry. I’ll stay._

 

“What good would it do” (more calmly now, getting very close, _you are very close_ ), “To tell you of my father’s makings? How would it serve you? You have not his skill.”

 

He loses consciousness for that, and skin from both shins.

 

Fingon slaps him awake. It isn’t Fingon, of course, but that doesn’t matter. Mairon’s pupils are blown wide. That doesn’t matter, either. It’s a trick of the darkness.

Maedhros is at once both hot and cold. The pain had gradually become a thing to be questioned. It is so absolute as to be a question of God Himself. God is pain, perhaps.

It never once occurs to Maedhros to _answer_. The mine? Athair’s guns? How best to siege Mithrim? He has already forgotten most of it. Did he ever care? Who was Maedhros Feanorian, to concern himself with war?

Who _was_ he?

“You know,” he says, “I haven’t any intention of telling you what you want.” He _thinks_ he says all of this, all this extraneous words, and says them very clearly. Fingon nods encouragingly, _yes, Maitimo, you are very eloquent. You should take Grandfather’s place on the city council, you really should._

_Ha. You said that when we were young._

He shouldn’t have put it like that; shouldn’t talk about being young.

Fingon buries his face in his hands.

 

It’s strange to think that—someone, someone he bid farewell to, of course, _do not think of them now_ , Fingon says, _because you must not lose what we have made here_ —

Anyway. It is strange to think that someone cleaned and stitched the wound on his shoulder, mourning over the ruined ink there. It is strange to think that Fingon and he once let a stranger mark them, as if they were doomed to remember each other always, no matter where the sky fell.

 _Well, that at least is true_ , Fingon points out. (Fingon has been weeping steadily for a while now. He keeps dashing at his eyes with his sleeves.) Fingon keeps his sleeves rolled down whenever he can; he is orderly. The anchor on his shoulder is hidden.

That part of Maedhros’s shoulder is gone; the skin and some of the flesh beneath it carved away, and the wound seared.

 _Strange,_ he comforts Fingon. _It’s just strange. Nothing more than that._

 

Mairon’s fingers bite into his cheeks. One is hard against the swollen socket. Maedhros used to think that _that_ was pain. In a way, he knows it was. And in another way—

“Insolent scum,” Mairon spits. “You _will_ tell me.”

“You know I will not,” Maedhros says. He can still smile, he finds. No doubt it is a demon grin.

_Is it?_

_Your smile is always the same to me._

_Sure, and you expect me to be relieved by that._ There’s the Irish in him. Athair at his sharpest. Athair— _sure, and next you’ll be asking me to—_

 _I could tell you of memories_ , Fingon suggests desperately. _The things I loved best about our lives. Long ago._

 _I think it is better if you don’t_ , Maedhros says, trying very much to be kind. Fingon’s feelings must not be bruised. Not by Maedhros. And yes, he left Fingon at the bridge, but he has paid for that, hasn’t he? Even that. _I must not lose what we made, remember?_

Fingon must be agitated, since he has begun to contradict himself. Fingon must be agitated, to let Athair slip in.

They never got on, Fingon and—and Feanor.

Mairon’s knife blurs silver, close to his eyes. Mairon’s hand splays taut the skin between collarbone and chest. “If you love your father so much, then bear his name.”

Maedhros would recoil better from the thought of what comes next if he—

_—losing—_

The knife digs deep.

 

When the room shifts anew, Fingon is gone.

 _Fingon, Fingon, Fingon_ —

 _I’m here. You’re not alone._ Fingon’s warm, dry hand—everything else is dripping and cold, or dripping and hot, so a warm, dry hand _must_ be real. So. What is the hand—it’s resting on Maedhros’s neck, covering the crust of drying blood. It doesn’t even hurt, considering. Considering that each new inch burned or torn or flayed is the white storm of anguish he _chose_.

Mairon’s scrawl only reaches half across his chest. There is— _Christ_ , _fuck, there’s a long way to go._

_Fingon, the woman who died—_

_What woman?_

_I know that you remember. I know you do._

 

A laugh. Steel-grating, again. “And who is Fingon?”

 

_Pay him no mind._

_You’re too easily frightened...cano, you’re too easily frightened. He isn’t angry yet. Not enough._

_Maedhros, I’m begging you. Don’t—_

_Would you really_ , Maedhros asks him. Teasing? Is he—no, _goddamn_ , he’s dreadfully serious. _Would you really expect me to go back now?_

_What do you ask of me?_

_You know that, too._

“While you have a shred of skin left on your miserable bones,” Mairon proposes, when he has finished laboring over the lettering that now stretches from one shoulder to the other, “Perhaps you should beg.”

Maedhros smiles, first at Fingon, in farewell, and then at Mairon.

“Like you once begged _her_?”

Mairon, it seems, can still blanch in the red light. His knife moves quickly, nicking the hollow of Maedhros’s throat, beneath his ear. A little deeper, and death would be absolute. Oh, death. Be as absolute as God and pain, if you have any shred of black mercy!

(Maedhros leans forward.)

“You know who I mean. I bear her mark. Do you?”

 

_You are proud of yourself. You wanted this. (You never wanted this.) You think you’re going to be happy, and you believe you were created to love. You have been in love all your life, with everyone else who shared your eyes or your smile, with everyone else who ever needed what you had to give._

_You are proud,_

_pride is a sin,_

_you yourself are sin,_

_you never wanted this._

_…today I found more in myself than shame…after so much discovery of my own lowliness…_

_Here, you can admit: You never wanted this._

“Did she tell you?” Maedhros cannot laugh, but he does try. “How I sated her? Or were you too jealous to ask, knowing you would never—”

The taunt escapes him as Mairon’s blade sinks deep in the muscle between shoulder and neck. Maedhros does not look at Fingon, will not look at Fingon, while he descends this final stretch of filth. Maedhros does not look at anything at all. He is not quite human, now. He is whatever comes just before death and damnation.

Ah yes: calm, and despair.

“When I kill your brother,” Mairon says, hot eyes and hot breath both near equaling his irons, “Whichever it was, I will carve out his heart and dine on it.”

No, no brothers. Not to be thought of, now. Maedhros—filth—desperate—

“And yet, though I took her from you, you will not kill me.”

 

 _Oh, God,_ Fingon says. _Maitimo. My poor Maitimo._

Maedhros would tell him not to call that name, but he has already said goodbye. There is only one more thing for Fingon to do, and the Fingon Maedhros has made will know to do it. Soon, now. Very soon.

 

So. The iron seized—gloveless—

The first blow hard enough to crack a rib.

Skin and flesh and fresh blood all follow it, clinging along the brutal length when Mairon’s red hand draws it back. As it descends for a second blow, Maedhros is stunned by how blurred the world is, almost as if a hand (not his own) has smudged the colors. He is no longer, particularly, aware of the pain. He _is_ aware of sharp, unbearable heat. Starkly, survival turns _impossible_ in black and red. The sizzling stink is a grease-fire, the lines of his body are stakes in the ground, the arrow of his heartbeat is quivering on the string.

_Fingon. Fingon, please. Hold on—_

He counts five blows to his ribs and belly, if those are parts of him remaining, before

the arrow is—let go.

 

_What woman, Maitimo? You never said._

_You remember. The whore. You held her as she died, and I told you—I told you then—_

_What do you ask of me?_

 

_You are not at home. You are not on a cobbled street or a slipping riverbank, you are not a man who belongs to the rights of men._

_You’re not going to feel it when he cuts your body down. You will not notice what his knife does first or last. You are beyond all these things._

_Is that white light? Or did you leave the light behind you—_

_Well, Fingon. Fingon, are you there?_

_Foolish boy, these are not stars, and you are not holy. You know he was never here._

You are everything that a body can endure, with no redemption. You are not saving anyone. You let them take your hope and your command, you let them take a little pain and a little fear, and then you gave the rest away freely.

Let them leave you no grave. Let your body rot. Oh, that your body may rot!

You’ll make an ugly corpse, you know, and yet those words are beautiful because they are over.

 

(Did you really believe that Fingon knew what he was doing?)

 

The lines of your body are a scream, your despair is nothing more than a stake in the ground, you are waiting for a judgment and a pit of fire, but the fire is only _you_.

 

“Thank your God, my boy,” Morgoth murmurs, a playing card face of white and black and nothing else. “You _lived_.”


	7. we don't want to see any closer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another extremely brutal, difficult chapter. You've been warned.

The long grass comes to Alexander’s knees. Maedhros knows he is dreaming because he cannot see his hands on the reins, and to be riding so quickly—to be riding at all—he would have his hands before him, guiding and leading.

Alexander is the wrong color, yet Maedhros believes it him. The grass is the wrong color, too, more grey than green.

There is no sound in this dream. The entire world is silent.

Maedhros’s thoughts also have no sounds, and thus they are difficult to believe in.

 _This is loathsomely peaceful_ , he thinks, but because the words are shapeless, other words layer over them:

_I think I am free._

He can’t open his eyes. The lids are cold and heavy. He remembers nothing; not even why he wants to wake. Or maybe he doesn’t—want to wake, that is. Maybe the trick is to stay sleeping, so that the grass will swallow him up.

He doesn’t remember the grass, suddenly.

“Ah, my friend. You are awake. Easy now—very easy. You must not stir.”

The voice is soft, and accented French, and Maedhros rears up to fight it away. He will hurl himself over the saddle and into the grass—ah, _there’s_ the grass again, and he will claw and slash and—

He cannot move. This reality becomes immaterial, because he _tries_ to move. The sharp, raw-nerved punishment scrapes over him, shudders through him, makes him wild and the world dull.

“Please.” The voice is kind. (All voices _can_ be kind.) “Lie still.”

Something is lifted from his eyes. Is that all—is that all it takes? Could the pain be lifted too, like a sheet of nettles draped on tender skin?

“The light will be near to blinding. Have a care.”

Maedhros doesn’t want to be blinded. His breath is breaking from his lips in little, tormented gasps.

He still has a mouth, then. (Why wouldn’t he have a mouth?)

His tongue, now that he knows it, tastes horrid. His throat is all but closed. Is it sewn closed? Who would do the sewing? And where _is_ he?

Lips, next. He forces tongue to lips, and finds them dry and ragged. That, at least, is nothing new. Athair hates—hated—when he bit his lips, but all the scoldings in the world couldn’t stop the habit.

Now Athair is dead, and Maedhros is supposed to be.

He remembers—that.

He remembers, and he’d rather have the blinding pain.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” he says. Croaks. His voice isn’t—isn’t right. Cut off halfway down his chest. He has a chest, does he? A chest and—hell, he can’t move his arms. If he opens his eyes, he’s going to go blind.

“Oh, dear,” says the calm, kind voice. “Well, you’ve been through a great deal. I do suggest you keep your eyes closed. I do—”

“Fuck you,” Maedhros says. Again, croaks. Because he’s dead, he’s still fairly certain of that. And this must be hell, and he thought hell would hurt a good deal more, except this also hurts. It’s a strange kind of hell that tells a man not to open his eyes.

_Maybe you don’t have eyes anymore._

He blinks and the light stabs down like a doctor with a scalpel bending low.

Oh, doctors. What the _fuck_ —why does he keep cursing? _Who_ is he cursing?

He can’t see anything for about five minutes, if he is capable of counting minutes. It seems most probable that he isn’t. He has forgotten the tall grass just enough to keep a name for it, forgotten his horse as if he never felt that coarse mane in his hands.

“Hands,” he rasps out. “Where are my hands?”

(A foolish question, to ask in hell.)

“Your hands are bound, so that you cannot hurt yourself.” The voice is suddenly so deep in pity that Maedhros himself is submerged in aching waters. What does it mean to ache? The pain of his body is—

He is supposed to _know_ what and where and who he is.

“This task falls to me, and it is a cruel one.”

Yes. _Cruel_. Maedhros understands _that_ without knowing it. He doesn’t have to know things in hell, perhaps. Maybe it is enough to welcome the scalpel to his eyes.

He widens his eyes, and the tender flesh rebels (oh no, not flesh, not, not anything that can be hurt— _but you fool, you are hurt, you know you are hurt_ , what the _fuck_ happened to not needing to know?).

“Why the _fuck_ ,” Maedhros asks, since the scalpel is going to make him open his squeezed-shut eyes again, surely, “Are you _French_?”

“Goodness, that’s not the question I expected.” There is a sound like a laugh. A soft laugh. It makes Maedhros’s ribs contract and then the scalpel comes there, and it hurts so _goddamn much_ —

God. Goddamn? Just God. Who is—

_And Michael said, who is like God—_

“I am Father Clement,” the voice says. “I am a priest, which is why I am here. I am a doctor, which is why I am alive. Your name is Maedhros, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” Maedhros says, slightly more conversationally. “You’re not a—a priest. There’s no priests here. Not—not anymore.”

“Certainly, we are not welcome.” A pause. “Do you know where you are?”

Saying, _I am in hell_ , is, he supposes, the sort of baldly obvious statement that will see him beheaded and reheaded, or whatever they do in hell. Has his head been chopped off yet? Why does he think he’ll be given the mercy of the guillotine?

Oh, of course, this bastard is French, or pretending to be. That is called _drawing a connection_ , and he is surprised that he can still manage it.

On the subject of _drawing connections,_ someone, he isn’t sure who, would find it very entertaining that demons were French. Athair, perhaps? No, it hurts to think of Athair, who is dead, but who otherwise has no features. Not a single feature. He isn’t to think of Athair, then.

 _Celegorm_?

Maedhros tries to stop the shudder, unsuccessfully. Maybe he screams. Maybe the scream makes it hurt more. There’s a good deal of shame in screaming, isn’t there?

A hand settles on his forehead, reminding him of what it means to have a head at all, and thus, a pounding headache.

“Your fever has fallen, but you will not keep it down like this, my friend.”

 

_Your God_

_Thank_

_Your God, my boy, thank your God_

“Please,” Maedhros gasps, and it is more than a gasp: it is a prayer.

(One cannot pray in hell.)

 

There was a boy who was a desperate, grasping, hollow thing long before he fell from other people’s grace, long before he watched other people fall because he had killed them. That boy followed a dying star because the star was his father. That boy gave his body to a monster and could not find his soul.

 

_Thank your God, my boy, you lived._

No. No, he didn’t live. He isn’t—they stripped his body and mocked him, he was shorn of his hair, he _knows_ that. He was offered death, and he refused it before he welcomed it. Now, this is hell, and Athair is dead and Amrod is dead and he—he was _broken_ , but he can admit that there are some things he knows.

_My boy…_

He was whipped, he remembers that. Remembers how he feared it; there’s a good deal of shame in fear, too. He would not answer their questions, but he opened his mouth for them, and he let himself be led away, led to darkness. He has (had) no intention of washing off the stain of word and touch. They marked him, it is over. It is over, he died. He went down to the darkness to die, and he—he—

“Maedhros, Maedhros, do not—you are not strong enough. Breathe. Here, have a little water. A few swallows of water will do you no end of good.”

When he cries out, _no_ , it is hardly a word.

 

Alive, then. Alive in a cold grey room. He is cold, though the light blinds him. If he has been here before, the memory has not yet returned.

“When…”

“Drink a little more,” says the priest, Clement, Father Clement, what kind of hell where Maedhros must look a priest in the eye? _Better_ to be blind, perhaps.

He does not allow his lips to be wetted; he has no say in the matter. The water tastes like his tongue: wretched.

There are a thousand questions that a braver man would ask. Maedhros is plagued not by his own cowardice, but by his own dream-clouded head. His body is too stiff, too tender to recognize the ordinary functions of rest. Of drugged stupor. It is impossible to know what he must know by his own powers alone.

He was trained better than this—or he wasn’t. His training prepared him for nothing at all.

Maehdros blinks, and sees only grey. If the priest has a face, he has not shown it. That means that there is no need to look at him. Of course, Maedhros cannot move—cannot even turn his head.

(Another collar? _Oh, God, how long…_

 _Who is like God. Who_.)

“How long?” he asks. Is it clever, that he thinks to ask that?

(Tears smart in his eyes.)

“You have been under my care three weeks,” the priest answers, still too kindly. “All the while I was instructed to keep you in a state of rest. You have much healing yet before you, and indeed there were times when—”

He has not lost the power to weep. The tears are streaming, as if long-held, and they trickle from cheek to temple, helplessly steady.

 _Times when you might have died_.

“Did it occur—” a cough climbs the ladder of his strangled throat. The agony of it steals both thought and question.

“You have several broken ribs. Three, I think.” There, at last, is a shadow amid all the brutal light.

When Maedhros’s eyes clear (a little) and the pain recedes from the brink of shivering chaos to the repose of stiff-limbed tension, he sees that the priest has a face.

Not a remarkable one, save for a single aspect. Father Clement is a small man with lined features and thin white hair. His shoulders stoop; he does not wear a collar.

There is a cross branded into the center of his forehead.

Maedhros cannot tear his eyes away from it.

“So we are acquainted,” the priest says softly. “Maedhros, I am sorry.”

“For what?” _For keeping me alive?_

Beneath the gruesome red bars, Father Clement’s eyes are at once watered and steady; calmly blue. “Sometimes you woke. You could not speak, at first, though you tried. You called a few—I suppose they were names, but I will not trouble you with repeating them. Maedhros, my heart has broken for you every day.” All this, in a matter-of-fact tone that Maedhros would turn away from, if he could only _move_. The priest ends: “You have a strong spirit, my friend.”

He whispers, “That does me no good.”

 _We must always speak respectfully to priests_ —

He can hear his own child voice uttering those words, and he finds that he hates the memory of that voice so fearfully it makes him grind his teeth together

“Nothing seems to do us much good, here,” Father Clement answers.

 _I suppose they were names_.

This is the infirmary. Maedhros remembers that. The doctor who treated his wounds—such as they were, at the time—is nowhere to be seen.

“You know,” Maedhros says, as clearly as he can. _A few names._ That’s not what he’s asking.

_Three weeks._

_Three—_

(Live.)

(A few names.)

Father Clement waits for him to finish. Patience makes his skin crawl. Patience is so much the same as _time_.

Teeth on teeth again. They took no more from him, that he can tell. They left him so many teeth. His tongue. Both eyes.

(What need had they, to take these things? No need at all.)

“You know,” Maedhros repeats, forceful where he can be, “What was—what I am. Tell me.”

“It will not help you.”

If he tells the priest he wants to die, the priest will not kill him. If he tells the priest he wants to live, the priest will not kill him. No one is going to kill him. The plain-walled room, almost goes black at that, almost shuts him away again.

But nothing is so easy, or so clean.

He hears his voice as it is now: ragged, the only sound in his thick head. “Then free my hands and I’ll see to it myself.”

He said almost the same to a murderer and the murderer mocked him. Then he said it again. How many times is Maedhros to be a fool?

(Not many. Not many chances to be foolish, for mere scraps of a body.)

“You are heavily bandaged, and must remain so,” the priest informs him. He shakes his head. The cross-scar is a hideous, angry one, though it does not look fresh. Maedhros’s stomach churns, and it is familiar. He wants badly to vomit: to run and vomit, as he did even before he was a corpse tethered to breathing.

But Maedhros must not ask further; must not be seen to _want_ anything. The tears will not stop, true, but he forces his mind to other tasks. His ribs are fire and what he can feel of his limbs hums with its own harsh heat.

 _Hands first_. He is—he was Athair’s son, once. Athair taught his sons to work with their hands.

 _Sons_.

The salt on his lips could be tears or blood, or both.

His fingers all move, though they are numb. His wrists ache. They are raw. _The shackles, remember?_

_Yes, fuck, I remember._

(He is only talking to himself.)

Hands resolved, his arms are strapped down too firmly to be of any use or purpose. He cannot feel his feet. He cannot feel his legs, and then he _can_ , and the sharp, unknown shock frightens him.

_On his knees._

He—well. What good is shame. He blubbers.

“Maedhros, listen to me.” Father Clement is earnest. Maedhros wants to bore his eardrums out rather than hear that voice, or any voice. He barely knows the man, and hates him already.

_Is it really him that you hate?_

_Fuck you_ , Maedhros whispers. _You foul fucking monster._

“I’m not a monster,” Father Clement says. “Though I’ve asked myself the question more than once.”

Maedhros isn’t talking to him, is not _fucking_ talking to the branded animal with a holy name, the chosen one of God, that’s one for irony—

 “Do you want to sleep again? It is all I can offer you, I’m afraid.”

 _And when you wake again_ , Morgoth suggests smoothly, _You will have forgotten everything once again. That is mercy, if you like! That is mercy, my boy._

Maedhros keeps his mouth shut. By and by, the priest leaves him.

He has not forgotten, not even for a second of waking or sleeping, what it is to be alone in a room.

 

_On his knees—till the day you die—do you recognize it—save yourself a little pain—earn you another—_

_If you—_

_—love your father—_

_So much._

_Bear his name bear his name bear his name._

He shall not sleep again. It must be possible to die, without sleep. A doctor would know. A doctor could tell him how his mind and memory will falter. And surely it will hurt; yes, it will hurt, but it will be his own pain.

Maedhros stares at the colorless light until his eyes sting. Whenever weariness begins to roll over him, he stiffens his body. Every moment—every second—of anguish that spikes through him is enough to let him stray from the edge of…

 _Rest_. It seems all wrong to call it rest.

 

_Till the day you die._

If he tries, he can stitch it together. He can. He can recall the twist of the knife and the gasping humiliation.

(Because it _is_ humiliation, when one is used to beauty and one _lives_.)

 

If Athair were here, and Maedhros does not want that, does not want it _at all_ , but he supposes if Athair were here he would say, “ _Nelyafinwe, the world is only a thing to be endured._ ”

 _Fuck you,_ Maedhros thinks, _I don’t want to see you._

He doesn’t want to imagine the shocked turn, the lifted brows.

At least he can remember him, now. Remember Athair. The pain must have knocked it back into him, pushed away the polished death’s head, for a time.

He finds that it isn’t a relief—merely more suffering. Maedhros is suffering, and he doesn’t even know what good he is.

 _What_ _good is he_ if they don’t want him for his body, _what good is he_ if they don’t want him to die?

 

(He is still puzzling that over when he drifts off to sleep.)

 

In this dream, he is waist-deep in clear water. The sun’s gentle heat fans his bare shoulders. Faintly, he can see something at the edge of the shore, but Maedhros (in the dream) does not care what or who it is. Instead, he reaches up and pushes back his hair from where it has fallen forward. It curls around his fingers, warm and dry. It slips down his neck like silk.

He has nothing with which to tie it back.

When he lowers his hands, his fingers are stained red.

At first he thinks it is a trick of the light—the light is very red—but it isn’t. The redness is blood, and the blood runs down his neck and his chest and his arms, down into the clear water.

He swears. Or he is sure that the word that leaves his lips will be swearing, but instead he says, _save me, save me_ , _save me_.

The thing at the edge of the water rears its head.

It is a beast with glowing eyes. There is a coal in its belly.

The blood flowing over Maedhros has turned the water muddy crimson, yet it does not come from any wounds.

 

“Easy, my friend. Easy.”

Maedhros jerks up, but he cannot do more than feel himself throttled by the collar at his neck. So: there _is_ a collar. He was right. He was right, though he now doesn’t recall about what.

It comes to him more quickly, this time. The grey room and Father Clement’s pale, sad eyes and the itching fire of his immobile flesh.

“Drug me,” Maedhros says hollowly. Maedhros, who swore he would not beg. “Just—just make it. Make it go away.”

There is a whining scrape, chair-legs over the floor, and Father Clement sits down. Maedhros can see as much out of the corner of his eyes.

The man is not much shorter sitting than standing.

“Maedhros,” he says. “I understand if you cannot believe me.”

Maedhros begged once. Doing so again will bring him nothing.

  _A hard path_ , Morgoth told him, weeks ago, now. _A hard path, and a new lesson._

The lesson is:

There is no lesson, except to be broken and still.

“No rest, then?” he asks. His voice is thin, scraped and stretched.

“I can give you something to make you sleep again. Is that what you want?” Father Clement presses his dry lips together. Even without the scar embedded in his flesh, he would be an ugly man. Maedhros is repulsed by him, repulsed by the ugliness.

In the days and years when he wore silks and smooth woolens, he would cast a coin from gloved fingers to the ugliest beggars in New York—

_—ah, what a gentleman, what a perfect gentleman!_

_—my God, you’re an angel, oh God—_ (That, the gasp of a woman he didn’t love.)

(Your God, my boy. Your God.)

“I will not receive what I want,” Maedhros says bitterly. “I want you cut out my eyes, Father. Carve them out and tell me I have begged for it. I want you to tear out my tongue. I want you to slit me from throat to belly like a fish. I’ll even scream for you. Will you do it? Will you do what I want?”

Father Clement does not shut his eyes. “I ran from you,” he says. “Well, not running,” and he reaches down, as if to demonstrate, and Maedhros hears the clink of chains below—“But as close as I could come.”

Maedhros’s tongue is heavy in his mouth. If he sleeps, he will dream. He does not want to dream.

(He will not die of wakefulness. They will not let him. His body will even betray itself.)

“I ran from you because it grieves me to see you like this. I am a coward, you think, to do as I am bid. Am I not?”

“I do not care what you are.”

“Indeed, but you care what _you are._ That is what you tried to ask me. To tell you _what you are_ now. And you are still a man, my friend. Still a man—though a very hurt man. I know you know this, but I ran instead of telling you. What is it you would like to know?”

Maedhros is weak, and begins to weep again. Silently, but it is still crying. These are still tears, running down his face.

(Not blood. No wounds, there.)

“Ah, ah, but that will help you,” Father Clement says softly. “Your eyes were very delicate at first, so I had to bind them. The small vessels—they are called capillaries. They burst under strain. They are better, now, yet I am sure they remain sore also.”

Maedhros looks at him, steeling himself to do so. For should he really shrink away, from a small, frail priest? A priest mocked by the brand of his faith?

“You serve him willingly?” he asks. He means the question as a barb.

Father Clement sighs. “I heal. I am allowed to heal. That lets me forget that I seem to serve both God and Satan.”

Of course a priest would speak in riddles.

“Three weeks,” Maedhros rasps. Faces his fear head-on, like a needle under his nail. What he would give to go back—back to that quiet forge. If he told Athair that he would not do as he was ordered, if he was brave enough to stand firm as a child: would that change the course of how he became a man?

“Yes,” Father Clement answers. “As I told you, sometimes you spoke. I did not try to understand what you said. You see, if I do not understand, what can I report? Nothing.”

Maedhros does not thank him, for this.

“You have a strong spirit. Your body has been weakened gravely. The risk of infection is high, where…” Father Clement pauses. “Maedhros, I do not wish to shock you.”

“I remember what he did to me,” Maedhros says grimly.

“Not all of it,” Morgoth rebukes. His footsteps ring heavy now, as if to suggest the failure to hear his approach is a fault in others’ hearing. “I am afraid, Maitimo, that you do not remember _all_ of it.”

Maedhros has not a choice of dignity: his entire body stiffens, and thus spasms, and thus he cries out. In the blur of loathing that follows this (both for himself and for—for the man at the door), Father Clement rises so quickly that his ankle manacles clatter and clash.

How did Maedhros not hear them before? How did he not hear—

“ _Notre père_ ,” Morgoth chuckles. “How fares your charge? I could not help but hear that he begins anew his demands. A sharp tongue, _Père Clément,_ but a silver one.”

“He needs rest,” Father Clement says evenly. He stands out of Maedhros’s sight. So does Morgoth, but Meadhros can well imagine how—how _unchanged_ his tormentor is. How vast and looming and absolute.

( _Your God._ )

 “The holy man,” Morgoth says softly. “Maedhros, my lad. Did you see how Mairon treated him? I must be more careful of my friends. I must be more careful in my…instructions.”

Maedhros gasps when Morgoth’s hand settles against the top of his head, curving and resting as it was wont to do in their first encounters.

Slowly, knowingly, the long fingers twist in his hair.

“There is a fine curl forming,” Morgoth says softly. “As this poor crop begins to grow again.”  Snake-swift, his vast body shifts into view, stooping low.

His breath is hot on Maedhros’s cheek. He smells, ever, of funereal pine.

“I offered once, to spare you the beauty I praised. Do you wish, now, that you had agreed to the terms I set before you?”

To move is to submit. Maedhros does not even twitch an eyelid.

“Sir.” Father Clement again. “He is not strong enough.” Maedhros wonders at his daring. But was not he daring, once upon a time? Did not he fight, and rage, and even—yes, there as Morgoth turns, neck and shoulders undulating in sharp attention—

The faint scars.

(How little they mean.)

“A doctor,” Morgoth says coldly, stroking Maedhros’s chin with one, slow, unstudied hand, “Does not need a tongue, _Père Clément_.”

Father Clement does not speak again.

“But _you_ need your tongue, Maitimo. Dear me, how small you look here. How frail.” Morgoth’s lips twitch. “It pains me, that you and I could not be gentler with one another.”

Maedhros is looking at him, but without focus. He looks _through_ him.

(There is nothing on the other side.)

“You asked a question,” Morgoth reminds him. “You asked for something, Maedhros.”

How long has he been listening? Maedhros presses the tip of his tongue against the wall of his teeth. He is a body offered for slaughter, and slaughter was accomplished but somehow the body remains.

His body.

If he is frantic, can he hide it? Can he even attempt to?

“You might not remember the question,” Morgoth suggests, very softly indeed. “It is not one you asked today. You asked it when you first awoke. We had been very worried for you, my lad. It was—how does one say, _touch and go_. Can you guess what you said?”

Maedhros says nothing.

Morgoth presses his hand over nose and mouth until Maedhros’s body struggles.

“Still alive, I see. You were trying to leave me again, in mind if not in heartbeat. _Guess_ , boy.”

“No doubt I asked if you would kill me,” Maedhros answers. His voice is a sheet of ice, a flat grey wall, an acre of lonely—

“Not at all. You said, _Who am I? Who am I?_ ” He turns his head. Maedhros follows, bird to snake. “Did he not ask that, _mon père_?”

(Perhaps Father Clement nods.)

“It has been more than a fortnight since you were out of danger. More than a fortnight since I have been able to return to my work. To the building of the rail, and the beautifying of this mountain. But believe when I say, Maitimo—I stayed at your bedside near daily. I would not have seen you…lost.”

A memory—horrible and blood-soaked, and yet not nearly harsh enough to be called _worst_ —springs to mind. Fire in his mouth, on his new-torn shoulders. Shivering and shaking and…and _sleeping_ , in Morgoth’s arms.

Maedhros’s lower lip finds its old place between his clenching teeth.

“Who are you now?” Morgoth shuts his eyes, and opens them again after an interminable pause. “Shall we see together, you and I?”

Whom might he think of? Could he find his family again, anyone but Athair, to comfort him? When Athair drove needles and worse things than needles into his hands, when Maedhros’s baby-tears begged to be released—there always came a time when he could run from the forge, back to the kitchen, back to—

_No. You let her go._

(He imagines the creature at the water’s edge.)

Methodically, an echo from cruelties past, Morgoth undoes first the collar, and then the restraints at chest and wrist, waist and knee and ankle. There are so many.

There are so many bandages after that.

“A pair of shears,” Morgoth commands, in the sharper tone with which he speaks to Father Clement— _a trick, just another trick, brand or not, they are allies,_ _you cannot trust anyone_. “Those would do nicely.”

Maedhros, who, unbound, cannot gather the strength to move his limbs, chokes down a cry as cold steel slides against his skin.

Morgoth is cutting away the bandages.

 _Lift an arm_ , Athair would say, _and strike him._

Maedhros does not even try.

The lengths of linen are stained red, but only lightly. That means that they were fresh not long ago. Maedhros, squinting through eyes swarming with tears, feels no grime limning his skin. He has been bathed, and his wounds cleaned. If three weeks _have_ passed, he has been given food and water also.

He shudders. The blade of the shears caresses his thigh. It _hurts_.

“Can you stand?” Morgoth asks, with one hand bracing his bared arm. His long fingers were meticulous at twisting away the torn strips. Now and then the tearing stung, but Maedhros shut his eyes almost without knowing it. It is as if he fears the future and hopes, at the same time, to be led to it.

 _Show me_ , he imagines saying. _Show me the way._

Morgoth would like that.

“Can you stand, Maitimo?”

To say no is to—to do what, exactly? What victory does he think to gain?

“ _No_.”

“Very well. I have carried you before,” Morgoth sighs. Maedhros imagines he can _hear_ the smile in his voice. His back is tender, still. He discovers this when Morgoth’s broad arm comes round his shoulders.

And yet, his back is nothing, compared to his ribs. Maedhros groans, and if his chest could fold inwards and away, he supposes it would. _Supposing_ , though, is a strange suggestion: he is not equal to thinking much of anything.

He wants to get away.

“Sir, I beg of you—” That is Father Clement.

Maedhros does not know what happens next. He is standing on feet that cramp and stiffen. His legs shake; his legs burn. He wonders why his ribs do not protest, and then he breathes, and, and, _and_ ,

“You are strong enough for this,” Morgoth whispers. “My dear boy, this poor body can bear a little more. You have my word.”

 _Fuck you_ , Maedhros thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Isn’t brave enough, perhaps, or doesn’t care about bravery anymore. Maedhros opens his eyes. The room looks no different, seen upright. It is all an absence: of color, of warmth. It is clean, as he is.

(To be clean, and yet on fire: the heat is rising, crawling, sparking up his shins and—)

He remembers, suddenly, what Mairon did to him. His legs burn and his shoulder burns and his ribs and his hips burn because…

His feet are bare, and atop his right foot he sees his first brand. It shines red and swollen, round like a grotesque pustule, but for the raw flesh in the hollow of it.

He does not even—when did Mairon—

“One foot in front of the other,” Morgoth urges, but Maedhros’s knees are weak. When they buckle, the skin of his legs stretches thin and fragile (new skin, he knows it is new skin, no doubt uglier than anything he has ever seen, _how shall he dare to look at it, to think of it, to think of anything but his own death at his own hand?_ ).

A long table covered with rolls of bandages, trays of instruments, and dark-shining bottles occupies one half of the room. The lights hung overhead are gas lamps, steady and shielded by fogged globes. An empty bed is tucked in the far corner.

Maedhros sees all this before he sees the looking glass.

“Come now,” Morgoth commands. He is wearing his long coat and his double-breasted vest and yet Maedhros can feel mostly keenly the chain of his pocket-watch, tingling against his side. Morgoth forces him close and forward.

Morgoth will not let him go.

(Why doesn’t he remember every brand?)

 _When you look in the glass_ , Morgoth says in his mind, though Morgoth himself says nothing, _You can never go back._

It is true: Maedhros cannot hide from himself forever. Maedhros cannot _live_ forever.

Is there some comfort, in that knowledge? _You cannot live forever. You cannot. No one can._

“Just another step,” Morgoth croons, as Maedhros’s limbs shudder sickly. “Another step, Maitimo.”

 _Do not call me that,_ but Maedhros can ask for nothing.

This is the looking glass. This is the sight of burned, bruised feet, the toes black-knuckled. Morgoth will not let him turn away. Morgoth taps his fingers against Maedhros’s jaw.

“Chin up,” the monster says.

And Maedhros is a boy who drove the needle under his nail so that Athair would know he _could_ , and he—

He looks.

His legs are patched red and angry and horribly smooth in places, more like a mockery of skin than skin itself.  There are burns there too, on the side of calf and the crest of ankle, and a deep gash down one knee. His mouth is a desert, and yet his gaze rises.

Too much, the oval memory seared to breastbone. Too much, the criss-crossed, roping hollow trenches that shattered rib and left him scarce able to draw breath. Too much, the gaping brands and the misshapen shoulder, which, roughly uncovered, weeps red through its heat-marred finish. Too much, _FEANORIAN_ , scrawled in angry blood-depth like an eternal collar, and _too much_ —

Maedhros sobs a breath low in his throat.

Morgoth clucks his tongue. “That was an unfortunate touch, I confess. Whatever did you say to him, to make him so angry?”

Maedhros does not, cannot answer. What can Morgoth even expect of him, beyond staring at the letters carved cruelly between the jut of his starved hipbones?

(Much. Morgoth can always expect much.)

Morgoth lowers one hand. With a prodding finger, he touches the edge of the first letter. Maedhros gasps and wrenches away, as if it hurts more fiercely than it does.

His ribs sing out again, at that. All a pulpy, heaving mass of anguish, and he might wheel backwards, might even _fall_ —but he is caught firmly in Morgoth’s hold.

“It is a very ugly word,” Morgoth remarks. “An ugly reminder.”

Maedhros’s feet scrabble to hold him up. He cries out; no, more than that. He is weeping.

 _WHORE_ , Mairon wrote last, after Maedhros believed himself dead.

“Why?” Morgoth echoes, and that means that a word has left him.

Maedhros has asked for something; has dared ask for a reason. Maedhros meets himself in his hollow, heart-stung eyes, and sees—

Sees _Amrod_ , because he looks so young.

“ _Why_ ,” he cries again, full-throated, and he wrests himself from the knowing iron of Morgoth’s grip, and Morgoth, ever perverse, _does_ let him go, and he _does fall_. Then the heat flares too bright for him to even understand what is happening to him.

“You ask _me_ why?” Morgoth demands incredulously, somewhere overhead. Maedhros can see and feel nothing, which is almost mercy, but he can still hear, which is not. “Maedhros, time and time again have I given you a choice between brutality and higher purpose. Time and time again have you chosen jealous Mairon over me. You have scratched and clawed and bitten like a wildcat, for—what? You mocked and derided your hosts. I showed you that I would see such insolence punished with the lash, and yet you remained defiant. Now you blame _me_?”

“ _Why_.” His voice is still his own, though it ebbs and whistles, a thing uncertain. “Why will you not _let me die_?”

Afterwards, he will suppose that it is Morgoth’s boot that settles on his throat. That traps the air in his desperate, aching lungs. Maedhros flails beneath the weight of it.

“See?” Morgoth asks, releasing him at last. Maedhos coughs and sobs and coughs again. His hearing fails for a moment, and returns. “You do not want to die, you little fool. You want everything _but_ death. I have offered you freedom. I have offered you my friendship. All, you have refused. Here you lie—battered and defiled, yes, but still free.”

Hard hands—Morgoth’s, too—haul Maedhros to his feet. Sight returns, swimming, and hard eyes meet his.

A doctor might call this— _shock_.

“I left you free eyes and a free tongue, amid your pretty face.” Morgoth’s voice sinks to a whisper. “I left you free to father children, if any woman would have you. Do I now ask for your thanks?”

“ _Fuck you_.”

(Except he doesn’t say it.)

Morgoth smiles. “Oh, you pity yourself,” he says. “You will stab yourself in that stained throat as soon as may be, will you not? You will leap from a cliff much less fair than the one I gave you, weeks ago.”

“You know I will.”

(He must have said _that_ , because Morgoth nods.)

“And if you do, if you so much as try, I shall flay _Père Clément_ and chain him, wriggling and bleeding, for the rats.”

Maedhros will understand, someday. Not now. He’d take a scalpel now, if he could find it. He would, he _would_ —

“Tend to his misery,” Morgoth says, and the hands and voice that replace his are softer, though Maedhros does not know them. Does not _care_ to know them.

(It all goes flat and grey and black after that.)

 

He remembers, in the darkness, that he asked, _who am I._

He remembers, in the darkness, that Morgoth answered, _mine_.

 


	8. a warrior lay asleep

Time and thought have become as elastic as skin, though not nearly so changeable. If there remains a world outside—of light and wind, sand and dust, water and wilderness, it is better structured by markers. The outside world owns night and day, pinning down the corners of life.

Here, moment and hour are equal. The same.

With endless time, Maedhros thinks of questions, but he does not desire to ask them. _Are there no other patients, in this place?_ he might demand, when weeks—weeks!—go by with no interruption but his guards taking him to and from Father Clement’s care. What and how he lives in those hours away from the infirmary is something he does not question either. To do so would be to feel, and he swears he shall not feel again.

Nothing will move his ruined soul, no matter what touches his ruined body.

“You are quiet today,” Father Clement observes, as Maedhros does not ask _when did he find_ you. Father Clement’s is a foolish remark; Maedhros is always quiet. There is little sound besides the clattering of spoons against bowls.

Maedhros swallows soup, burning with salt, and says nothing.

Eating is still—eating is still _uncertain_. He is permitted (for now) to do it himself. Soup and dry bread and cornmeal mush are most often what is sent up; likely the workers in the black unfinished cellars have the same. The food is almost always cold when it reaches him. Is that the price of having the infirmary for his cell? For _their_ cell?

Father Clement is a prisoner too, or pretends, convincingly, to be one.

 “Perhaps,” Father Clement suggests, as if he is greeted by anything other than stony silence, “we should supplement your walking today. What do you think of strengthening your arms?”

Maedhros’s arms are like the rest of him. Thin. Weak. _Atrophied_ , perhaps the proper word. And worse than that—

But he does not pick at the savage wounds beneath the loose, light bandages. That would be caring.

“We must still take care not to distress your breathing,” Father Clement adds, in a reasonable tone. _Care_ , as if he can hear Maedhros’s thoughts and chose the word with purpose. “Ribs heal slowly and painfully, don’t they?”

(Maedhros played often, at wanting to be dead.)

(There is a boy who cries wolf, but in the fable, the wolf does not catch _him_.)

Maedhros pushes his bowl away. Any gesture of petulance, of discomfort, always seems that it should bring the cut of a lash. But Father Clement carries no whip. His hands, when he touches Maedhros at all—salving hurts that Maedhros does not ask him to tend—are efficient and gentle.

They never linger.

 _So that you’ll trust him, and talk_. He doesn’t know who the voice in his head is anymore.

Walking goes like this: he gets up, with Father Clement’s hand on his unbandaged elbow, and trembling, he staggers across the long, narrow room. The muscles of his legs ought still to be in working order; they were not torn from the bones. He supposes that his legs could have been whipped, too. The tendons of his ankles slashed, the soles of his feet burned off. There is more that could be done to him. That _will_ be done to him, if need be.

Maedhros turns the pain-picture over in his mind coldly, then shoves it aside.

He leans on his hands, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. From thigh to ankle they are bandaged. The linen strips disappear beneath the hem of his shift. He has been given a shift. Like a child in dresses again.

He blinks through the black.

“Now, now,” Father Clement says, for he is always _talking_. Every one of Maedhros’s tormenters talks to him, until he wishes that Mairon had saved him the trouble and deafened him with hot wires.

A lie, that wish, for he cannot, quite yet, _want_ that. Maedhros is afraid of Mairon. When he does sleep, Mairon flays the skin from his face and tears out his tongue. Maedhros wakes gasping, because he is afraid.

Disgust is the best remedy for fear, he finds, and even disgust deals imperfectly.

“ _The nightmares may be helped with a little valerian_ ,” Father Clement suggested gently. That was the first night. The night after—after Maedhros saw.

 _Saw what, you fool?_ He speaks to himself as harshly as he can, lest a gentler voice slip in and coddle him. Lest gentleness enshrine even a moment, falsely. _Yourself, a leper made so by hands?_

_Yes._

(Maedhros did not take the valerian.)

Father Clement wakes him when he screams and gives him tea for his throat. Maedhros drinks it, and how different is it, to drink when a cup is lifted to his lips rather than when it is placed beside him?

There may be no sensible answer. He has only come to prefer the acts that have less illusion of choice.

Now, Father Clement has him by the elbow, the good elbow, the one without a faint burn across the crook and a deep brand in the flesh above it, still far from healed.

“You are doing better today,” the priest praises him, when they have crossed the floor and turned back again. “Your steps are firmer. Steadier.”

 _Oh, fuck you_ , Maedhros wants to say. And why not? “Fuck you,” he mumbles.

Father Clement chuckles. “We haven’t much in the way of proper weights, but if you try with this camphor bottle—”

“No.” The word has left his throat before he even—“No, not camphor.”

Father Clement does not frown. He seems to be made more cheerful. “Which one will you have then?”

 _A choice_. Maedhros stops breathing, but not in any sort of panic. No, the air merely rests in his lungs, as if it is stagnant water in a dark pool. He waits. He says. “I care not.”

Father Clement chooses the feverfew.

Raising his arms even to the shoulder is—

Maedhros sets his teeth. So much skin, torn and tattered in different ways, stitching itself back together ugly and wrong. His ribs are still a wildfire, the flesh over them no better. The flesh, that is, that remains.

(This has gone on for weeks.)  

It has been so long and yet no time at all, since he was whole.

He was largely a fool, when whole. A selfish fool. He laid his unbroken body beneath a woman and her teeth. He forced himself to careless stillness _then_ , when he still had lives to save. He wanted death and damnation _then_. He stiffened strong arms and unbent ribs _then_ , to keep them useless. This is, he supposes, just what a whore would do.

(His reward is simple: Maedhros can choose anything here, but death or freedom.)

“Shall we try again tomorrow?” Father Clement asks, when the bottle drops from Maedhros’s clawed hand.

Maedhros blinks. Silence in the infirmary, when he can help it. Silence, and bullish indecision. Father Clement blinks back.

_Fool._

“I won’t kill you,” Father Clement says suddenly. Now, a frown pinches the corners of his mouth. “I know that that must seem like harm.”

Maedhros’s legs ache as he lifts them, sweating, to the bed. His hands are the strongest part of him. He levers himself down on his back. His head is on the narrow pillow. His eyes are on the ceiling.

“I would like to tell you,” Father Clement says, “Why your life matters.”

Maedhros pokes the tip of his soup-salted tongue to taste his dry lips. There is no blood on them today.

“I would like to tell you this, but how much suffering would it cause you?” Father Clement sighs. “Too much. Let me then say only: there is a fire in you, yet.”

A horrid pity, having red hair. Always being seen as a creature of passion and flame. Heat, strength—

The angels in the endless halls, they have sunset crowns. The mountain itself is somehow warm, viewed from afar.  Maedhros lifts his dry lips into a grin. “Fire had its way with me, priest. Surely you can see that.”

“I see that you were punished brutally for no sin I know.”

“Mm.” Maedhros’s tongue is loosed, which is a dangerous thing—or would be, if he permitted himself to care for matters of danger.

( _You do, you’re afraid, you’re horribly afraid_.)

Maedhros says, “Come now, my sins are written on me. You’ve seen those, too.”

“And my saintliness is written on me, you think?” Father Clement’s thin, wrinkled face looms over him, and the priest taps his scarred forehead. “I may have been kept here enough years to forget what freedom smells like, but I haven’t forgotten what cruelty _does_.”

“What does it do?” He is a student, parroting the lessons to his master. He has done this before; he has been here before. He won’t bother to recall the bookish classrooms, the open fields, the darker places.

“Cruelty twists,” Father Clement answers gravely. “Not just flesh and spirit: it twists the— _verité._ Truth. Reality. Choice where there is none; shame where there is nothing to be ashamed of. Does this sound familiar?”

“Everything sounds familiar,” Maedhros answers. His voice does not belong to him—nothing does—but if he breathes shallowly and speaks softly, he _can_ speak. It’s been—Father Clement says it is the thirteenth day since his waking. Maedhros counts it as only two, two black holes of time when he was called away. The last time—

(How long before Father Clement tells him to kneel?)

“They fear you,” Father Clement says, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. “Cruelty is always rooted in fear.”

Maedhros does not laugh. There is no laughter in him. “Yes,” he says instead, just as softly. His fingers scrabble at the rough sheets. “Yes, this is fear. How much Mairon feared me when he reached into my mouth, or turned the knife, or branded me with a prayer medal. Yes, Father, _that_ is a mark of saintliness, too—worn near the heart as long as I live. _Mea culpa_ , _mea culpa_ , strike your breast. Perhaps God heard the scream and thought it a prayer.”

“Perhaps he did.”

Maedhros has said too much. He closes his lips.

(He longs for death, but that is an old story.)

“God is mysterious,” Father Clement says. “I was angry at him, too, for a long time. I failed him, and believed I failed myself. The mistake was upholding the _self_.”

 _Feanorian_ is cut in blood. Some of the brands were shaped—the thieves’ mark on his hip, a malefactor’s _M_ half-lost in the merciless ruin of his ribs and belly.

_The mistake was upholding the self._

“Keep fighting,” Father Clement says. “That is all.”

Maedhros does not answer, and waits for a blow.

The blow doesn’t come. Footsteps in the hall do.

(Here are the guards.)

“He is weary,” Father Clement says. “He has exerted himself today. He has—”

Maedhros’s hands lift him up. Is that—strength, after all, in his arms?

He offers ankles for the shackles first, then the wrists, and then they are linked together. When the guards grip him by the arms, he is not ready (never ready) for the pain in his chest.

“Enough,” Father Clement begs (Father Clement does that sometimes; he begs). One of the men strikes him. (There is the blow. The blow came, but not to Maedhros.)

Along the dark hall, his feet numb and bruised, his feet not on rough stone but on smooth. Up, up, he knows where he is going.

His mouth is hot and dry.

He will need it.

 

“Sleep,” Father Clement says. “I do wish you’d take the valerian. You needn’t have such dreadful nightmares, you know.”

“What does it matter to you?” This is a nasty question. Some part of Maedhros is in a nasty mood. The rest of him is a grey wall. A grey room, perhaps—more than walls, but floor and ceiling too, with no escape. The room of _him_ is also—empty.

His shame is now the roof above his head.

“We must find peace where we can,” says Father Clement. “We could find peace, you know. Even you and me, even here.”

“I have come from a kind of peace, just now,” Maedhros says. “You would call it cruelty.”

Father Clement holds the basin while he vomits.

 

“I hail from Quebec,” Father Clement says the next day. He is daubing some concoction of calendula and aloe around the brands on Maedhros’s right arm. Maedhros does not like, particularly, to hear the names and uses of herbs, but he will not argue.

Almost worse than the pain is the heat. Throbbing, pulsing _heat_ , seeming eternal, even though the iron was held there for only—

His head swims, a little. He has recognized (if not wholly accepted) that he does not remember all of—of it. His body and spirit rebelled: shutting him out, propping up paper puppets of comfort.

He hasn’t heard voices from the past in many days.

“I am a Jesuit.” Father Clement has been talking all this while. Maybe he has told these same stories before; maybe Maedhros then, like now, was not truly listening. “Are you familiar with Ignatius? The founder of the order.”

Maedhros shrugs, as an alternative to answering. It hurts. He won’t try it again.

(Yesterday, he was on his fucking knees with his hands folded, and all he did, all through time and hurt, was _answer_.)

“My brethren welcome, ‘whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God.’ As a young man, I liked that.” Father Clement’s swift fingers finish their application, and Maedhros feels the rough brush of linen. The sensation in itself is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it merely is.

 _He_ merely is.

Frankenstein’s monster was a body no longer quite dead. Maedhros, in turn, is a body no longer quite living.

“You are a soldier too,” Father Clement tells him. Father Clement does not know, has no reason to know, that Maedhros has heard those words before, from mouths that intended to bind them with power.

 _Soldier_ is not the word he lives with, anyway.

“Alright,” Maedhros says at last. Sometimes, when he breaks and speaks, Father Clement leaves him alone. “I understand you.”

His breathing is shallow in his chest. Two is a pattern, three a way of life—

Father Clement has not asked, the first nor the second nor the third time, where Maedhros goes when the guards take him away.

 

“If you ever wish to pray again, I will gladly do it with you.”

“Was it for praying that they marked you so?” Maedhros is sitting up today, which is torment from shoulder to hip, breast and back, but which (Father Clement suggests) will also restore his strength.

Strength again. As if it matters. As if it serves anything other than brief over-exertion, then drudged exhaustion.

“It was.”

“I still have some skin left,” Maedhros reminds him ruefully. “I’ll save it for something better than begging mercy.”

It is a pitiful lie.

 

Cornmeal mush and medicine. Soup and _perhaps you can try again in an hour, this is very good, you are not so short of breath when you walk._ Bandages and _lift this, now this, these are heavier than before, very good_.

Father Clement clearly believes him to be healing.

Father Clement is a man who still believes.

There are no windows in the infirmary. The looking glass remains, darkly blank as the surface of strange water. Maedhros does not go to look in it because to do so would show Father Clement too much. (Also, it would show too much of himself, to himself, though he has not forgotten a single sick line of scarlet. The truth is, he is terrified, and he cannot deny that anymore. He has to live in the fear, like a drunk must lie in his sick. He has to—)

“I know you know,” Father Clement says, “Where the blades are.”

 

“What?”

 

“Shears, scalpels…” Those watery blue eyes blur, but not because the priest’s gaze falls. No, this is Maedhros, always Maedhros. He curls his fingers around the cot’s edge.

No question is a safe one.

“I told you that I would not kill you, but you are clever. Observant. If you chose to end your life,” Father Clement says, “I would not hold it against you. I would understand it.” He clasps his hands together. He has no shackles at his wrists.

Neither does Maedhros, for now. They are both—there is a freedom, to their movements, from a certain angle.

“I would not advise it,” Father Clement adds. “For the same reasons why I will not do the deed myself.”

“To save your own life?” No question is a safe one, so Maedhros grinds his teeth as he asks this.

“To save your soul.”

“Oh, spare me,” Maedhros scoffs. Everyone has a breaking point. When came his? Was it in flailing, flogged, on the floor of his cell? Wailing like a child? Fainting under the scrawl of Mairon’s knife, the permanence of his irons? “I’m not going to kill myself. You can rest easy.”

“I am not afraid,” Father Clement murmurs. “Should that matter.”

 

 _You could kill_ him _, you know, quickly and painlessly, and then yourself, and then there would be no vengeance left to take. Indeed, that would be a kindness—for you do not know him, truly, nor care for him. You took two dozen lives—what is one more? He is old. He is—_

_Be quiet, won’t you?_

(He hates that voice.)

(He is talking to himself.)

 

Sometimes Father Clement talks about Quebec, the city and the lakes and the forests. He knew them as a boy, and as a priest. Maedhros has _seen_ all of these things, in other lands, and he does not want to think of those he _hasn’t_ seen. Doesn’t want to dream of clear water and whispering pines, of the scent of wild nature and wind.

Father Clement’s voice does not grate, though. When he tells stories, they are simple things. He is a babbling old man, and he means no harm.

Maedhros is almost certain that he means no harm.

But what is it, to be certain anymore?

 

When the guards come to take him away the fourth time, he nearly retches at the sound of the infirmary door closing behind him. He nearly weeps.

(He goes willingly.)

 

“If it would help you to speak,” Father Clement offers, after Maedhros refuses soup that night, “I will listen. But I think you would be overheard. And whatever you tell me might be wrung out of me, despite my attempts at…the stoicism.”

Maedhros almost laughs, at the man’s naivete, the belief that things can be _hidden_ here. But he does not wish to talk or tell. He does not wish to—

In the grey infirmary, quieter than lake or forest or any sort of home, he can pretend he does not remember… _anything_.

“What other comfort can I give you?” Father Clement asks. “Shall I teach you to wind your own bandages, that you may have something to do with your hands?”

He does not know where Maedhros comes from, does not know what Maedhros knows how to do. Must assume that—

“Though perhaps you know already,” Father Clement whispers. “It feels long ago now, even to me, but at first sight I recognized the gun-callouses on your hands.”

Nothing hidden.

Maedhros accepts the roll of linen because Father Clement places it on his palm.

 

His legs have—again, he would not call it healing, but with the sealing of almost-skin, they no longer require the careful attention that Father Clement first administered.

 _Doesn’t matter, what you would call it_.

The patches where the living skin was cut away are larger than his hand could cover, on both shins and his right thigh. He hates to look at the hideous ruin, tender and eerily smooth, but he hates more to look at the burn above his left knee, or the one that crests the arch of his foot. A pockmarked stigmata, of sorts. The irony is not something he can deride.

He bandages it all loosely, as Father Clement directs. Father Clement, like a thousand other voices Maedhros has known—

—two, just two—

believes in the dangers of infection.

 _A bad business_ , he calls it. He uses salt water and sharper stuffs than that, but he always warns and he always offers what relief he can.

(He saw to Maedhros’s mouth, also. Where the tooth was torn free, it was sticky with blood and worse. Father Clement scoured out the remaining shards that clung to the pus-filled socket. Then he packed it with gauze until the bleeding ceased.  So he told Maedhros later, at least; all was accomplished in the weeks of floating darkness.

Maedhros’s jaw aches, still, but the danger lessens.

Why does the danger always lessen?)

(Why?)

 

Father Clement, seemingly heartened by Maedhros’s progress with bandages, begins to provide him with mortar and pestle and formula list. _Grind a few slips of ginger-root_ — _light on the belladonna, very light, it’s poisonous if used in too great a quantity_ —

“Is it generosity, do you think?” Father Clement shakes his marred head. “I’d be a fool to call it so. Yet, I am glad to have access to these. It is a remarkable selection. Half of these ingredients—even those I am allowed to see and use here—they are far ahead of the current doctors.”

Maedhros has seen most of the bottles and rolled herbs before. He will not think of that, will not think of _where_. He says instead, with his head bowed a little over the mortar, “You are surprised?”

“Not at all. I have known _him_ for many years.”

Maedhros ate a little in the morning, the usual cornmeal. Now it churns in his stomach. It is foolish, to react so to the mention of not even a name, when the voice and hands and power that belong to the (unspoken) name have all been heavy upon him, and soon will be again.

“He’ll kill you,” he says, trying desperately to be unkind.

Father Clement sighs. The sigh is closer to a laugh than one might expect. “Someday he will.”

 

In the infirmary, he now paces its length a dozen times a day. Back and forth like a caged animal, which he is. He can lift his hand above his shoulder without bulbous black-fly spots crowding his vision. He can speak a little louder. Heavy pressure on his ribs is still dreadful, however. Father Clement examines him, always apologizing (as if Maedhros has any say in the matter), and Maedhros does his best not to cry out at the investigation of those deep-ground wounds.

 

Again, the guards come. Maedhros fights back no tears, this time. He _chose_ this.

(Choice comes to him, in all its vile trappings, as soon as he leaves the grey-walled room.)

When the guards return him to the infirmary, his lips well-chewed, he is forced onto the bed. They hold him down and bind him, with no warning or explanation, in the old restraints. Neck and wrists, waist and ankle.

It is proof of something. Maedhros is too tired to guess what.

The restraints are not loosed for two days. He cannot even relieve himself. Father Clement apologizes for that, too, but Maedhros begins to think Father Clement has no say in the matter, either.

“You have your orders,” Maedhros says, through his teeth. He had not thought of his pacing, his little work with grinding herbs, as _freedom_ —until now.

Gently, Father Clement touches the corners of Maedhros’s mouth with a cold cloth. He says nothing.

 

The guards return on the third day and let Maedhros go.

“Is it generosity, do you think?” he asks the priest.

They smile at each other.

It does not matter.  


	9. many that live

Father Clement asks more questions, and sometimes Maedhros answers them.

 _Can you take another round of paces?_ and _they have sent meat, will you eat a little meat?_

Once Father Clement says, “Maedhros, if the guards come today—” and though it is not a question, Maedhros answers, hollow but firm,

“They won’t. He has tired of me.”

Afterwards, he is stiff with horror. He has said too much, assumed too much, and all of Morgoth’s renewed torments crowd his dreams that night. He wakes, as he often does, to the priest mopping his brow.

“Drink,” Father Clement murmurs. The tin rim of a cup nudges Maedhros’s lips, which is enough to make him shudder in itself. “It is the valerian.”

Father Clement’s hand is warm, where the cup is cold. Maedhros drinks.

The next day, and the next, pass with no punishment for his rash words. That is not the same thing as certainty.

 

“I am angry today,” Father Clement observes, matter-of-factly, on the second of these evenings. At least, Maedhros believes it to be evening. Imagines that, in the outside world, the sky is gold and rose and plum-blue; then swallows down the imagining as if it is a shameful thing.

Sometimes Father Clement’s soft-spoken bluntness, the very contradiction of it, reminds Maedhros of—it does not matter. Unlike with the memory of sunset, his mind does not offer him a face, a voice. _That_ is not the same as relief.

“Why are you angry?” Maedhros is on the floor, knees and hands, pushing himself up on his arms. It makes his ribs hurt, but not as sharply as they did when he first woke. Many of the pains are dull, now. It has been nearly two months.

Still, Father Clement taps the floor with his shoe. “That’s enough of that,” he says. “Your shoulders are shaking.”

Reluctantly, Maedhros gets to his feet. He finds, chagrined, that his breathing comes in shortened gasps. He forgets, bytimes, how much exertion hurts him. It is—tempting, _desired_ even, to be focused.

Quietly, he reminds himself not to desire anything. 

“Why are you angry?” he asks again, stretching out on the bed. The blow doesn’t come, it never does, here.

“I am remembering.” Father Clement folds his hands under his chin. Maedhros shuts his eyes. Father Clement doesn’t hurt him for that either, for not looking.

Father Clement hasn’t hurt him much at all.

_But you let yourself be trained and strengthened like a dog, and for what?_

_You know_ he _has not forgotten you._

Maedhros is, perhaps, a fool. Indeed, he has predicted nothing—here—with skill or foresight, least of all his life and how it may be valued. If he is wasted and ruined, desecrated and mauled, how much use and enjoyment can be left in him?

How much _life_ is left in him?

Hazily, he guesses that, once healed, he will be taken from Father Clement’s care. The sooner that that happens, the sooner the priest will be— _safe_ seems the wrong word, but at least _his_ life will no longer be linked to Maedhros’s. 

Morgoth keeps slaves. No doubt he has a place for another. No doubt that would amuse him still, to see the son of his enemy brought low in one last way.

Slaves rarely escape, but they have a better chance of dying if they try.

(This, Maedhros tells himself, is not the same thing as _wanting_.)

“I would like to tell you of my greatest failure,” Father Clement says. “I know it is an imposition, to expect a listener. It is only—I feel its heaviness, this failure of mine.”

Maedhros does not merely possess a history of failures: he is one. He opens his mouth, the mouth that is scarred with years of nervous chewing and recent, dreadful pains, and says, “I will listen.”

(He listened before, and he wept, and there isn’t much left of him to believe either _yes_ or _no_.)

Father Clement busies himself with brewing a little tea, after their fashion. He clears his throat at last, and says, “His name was not Mairon, when I met him.”

 

_His name was not Mairon, when I met him. I was newly ordained—this is thirty years ago, you see. You were not yet born, Maedhros. In the Quebec forests, thieves roamed, emboldened by the unrest created by the war so recently past. Some of the thieves did not wait for cover of night; some carried weapons, even. I was called to administer extreme unction at a farmstead where the family had fought back. Poor souls. I came too late—the bodies of the man and his wife were butchered brutally, and their spirits long since fled._

_But their child—he had escaped. A little slip of a boy, with hair white as the dandelion, though I could see no color on him, at first, save red. He was rolled in their blood. Trying to understand, as I often have, what pain is, and why we must bear it._

_I took him, took him back to the other Jesuit fathers who lived with me. I tried my best to train the boy. It did no good. He hated me dreadfully. Not for leaving those bodies, you understand, nor for telling him what death meant._

_He hated me because I told him to forgive._

_Time passed and I found a new home for him. Perhaps with a mother, he would thrive. The blacksmith’s wife had three children already; they were strong and hardy, appearing well-fed. There I was very wrong; very wrong indeed. The blacksmith was a cruel man, and his wife little better. Oh, how long it was before I knew not to believe the piety of every churchgoer! I am a fool—always the fool._

_Little Sarron—that was his surname, the only name by which we knew him, he would not tell us his own—was given a hard time of it, I do not doubt. When he was thirteen, perhaps? A little older? The whole family was killed in their beds. The throats cut. The faces skinned. Rumor had it that—but it will not surprise you._

_We of the village, of the forests surrounding, did not see him again._

_It was only I who followed him. Not_ him _, in fact, at first, but the man whom I saw lurking about not long after. The great white face and the dark hair and clothes of an undertaker, these stayed with me. You know him, Maedhros._

_Knowing him too late has done me little good._

In another week or so, Maedhros will need fewer bandages. Dread, unable to be wrenched or rooted from him, has been a cunning master of late. He wonders if Father Clement will allow him the pretense of need, or if he will insist that the scars be bared to the open air, to Maedhros’s dragged, fascinated gaze.

“And you are angry to be trapped by him? By both of them?” He does not know why Father Clement has told him this story. Wishes that the thought of bloody Mairon was not its own hell and history in one.  

“I am angry that I let that boy go.” Father Clement dabs at his damp eyes with his cuff. “Angry that I was too proud and righteous, too afire with what I called hope—”

Maedhros shuts his eyes again. Morgoth never forgets his own whom he has marked in mind; later, he marks them in body.

(No escape.)

“If he was vile and savage,” Maedhros offers tonelessly, “Perhaps there was nothing you could do.”

_Except hide._

(No escape.)

“I have never been able to save anyone,” Father Clement says. “Though that was what I wanted, what I believed. Indeed, what I fear still. And I sit here, offering weak help to you—and here again, it is not _mine_ to save you, Maedhros.”

“No. It isn’t.” He shouldn’t have to—to _reassure_ this priest, a man old enough to be his grandfather. He shouldn’t have to listen, or to—

_Lay your head against my knee. Just so, Maitimo, just so. Do you hate me, still?_

Maedhros, as he still lives, _obeys_. Maedhros hates just as he dreads; stubborn as the roots of something that has died but remained buried.

“I beg your pardon,” Father Clement says humbly. “I spoke too fiercely, about things that must bring grief to you. It is only…” He does not finish his thoughts. The tea is finished. A cup is given, a cup is taken.

 _I will not be here forever._ Maedhros looks around the grey room, cold and barren, though beyond the walls of the mountain it must still be summer. The tea is such in name only; it is herbs steeped in cold water. There is no fire.

Maedhros swallows the water down.

When he is strong enough, his neck will be collared. (He is used to this.) He will be given to the man who gave him first— _Gothmog_ , sharp-eyed and heavy-handed, who buried his bullet in—

Right, it would be right, to die at _that_ hand. Morgoth cannot see him _everywhere_ , cannot save him _everywhere_.

(Still, it is Maedhros who will be in danger of failing yet again, of falling short. Why does it take so much time for him to learn? He paid in blood, when perhaps he did not need to.

_Your blood was always an offering. You know that._

For a moment, the voice in his head sounded not like his own, not like Morgoth’s, but like…)

 

“When did he give you your mark?”

Father Clement does not flinch. Maybe he has grown used to it, to the knowledge that his flesh is made horrid, made angrier than the anger he claims for himself. “Three years ago,” he says. “I have been with them three years. The mountain was not blasted out then; Mairon—as he calls himself—was only a specter to the captives who were gathered at Bauglir’s command.”

If there are ears at the door, they have heard every one of Maedhros’s secrets.

_Let me tell you another._

“There were captives three years ago? Slaves?”

“Indeed, there were. They were south and east of here, fenced in on the wide plains with no one to come to their aid. Bauglir would have made a fortune in anything—cattle-ranching, mining, but the railroad is a better chance than panning for gold. He moved them here, for that—or his soldiers did.”

 _Gold._ Maedhros sighs, and calls it breath. He cannot speak further, without remembering.

"I wept over it," Father Clement tells him. Maedhros almost winces with surprise. "I, an ugly old man--and yet it frightened me to think, how many years shall I live like this? How many times must I see myself?"

Maedhros bites the inside of his cheek.

"It was my second failure, that fear. My second great failure. I wasted time--days, even hours, that I could have offered up for souls. His soul. Now yours."

Maedhros is too much a coward to curl his lip, but inwardly, he scoffs.

 

The guards do not come that day.

 

“You _do_ have a soul,” Father Clement says.

Maedhros’s teeth are clenched; the weights in his fists are not heavy, but he has held them at the level of his shoulders for the count of a thousand.

Carefully, he lowers them. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“You have a soul unlike any I have ever encountered.”

“Fuck off,” Maedhros says, not very harshly.

 

A week since they should have come. A week in which they haven’t. The meals are the same. The herbs are the same.

Maedhros bathes himself, now. There is no pleasure in wringing out a cloth daubed with precious little soap— _soap, think, you used to, no, don’t_ —and squeezing his eyes shut as he passes it gently over the ridges that have begun to exist even in his dreams.

 _Whore_ , he reads beneath the tremble of his fingertips. _Whore_ , _Feanorian_ , bitter fates that he bound himself to without knowing what it meant to be bound to them always. Some of the scars sting because the wounds are deep and not yet healed. Some ache, and some he imagines bleeding even though the flesh has done its best to mend.

When he dreams, he cuts the marks himself.

( _I know you know where the blades are._ )

There wouldn’t be time, with Father Clement watching. That, and any wound, no matter how comforting—for oh, _how_ he longs to cut away those words, even though he will be no comelier for it—will lengthen the thread of his time here.

Father Clement tells him not to be afraid, and that every moment matters. How can the two be true at once?

 

“If there is anything I can do for you, you have but to ask.”

Father Clement will not kill him. Does not understand the mercy of death, in his humble grasp on pain. Likely Father Clement offers up the shackles he wears for Maedhros, who is increasingly made free.

Maedhros’s throat is dry. He drinks down the day’s draught, and makes no answer.

There was, after all, no question.

 

This is the matter of _not remembering_ : there is very little, and very much to do. If he were himself, he would grieve. He would rail and rant and do more than scream his way through nightmares. But as it is—

As it is, he is already numb with the prospect of another ending.

 _You know not to hope_ , and he does. _You know he has not forgotten you_ , and that time will come.

Pride is lost, faith is lost, love is a glass-shard stabbed through the vision of reason, and therefore…lost.

Patience, then. Patience. Every moment counts—

 

He wakes screaming. Father Clement is not beside him. There is no hand on his brow, no cup at his lips. The room is—dark.

Maedhros is not restrained. He sleeps as if he is, though, with his hands flat at his side. When he thrashes, and he does, he acts as one who cannot move his arms or legs. His neck and shoulders bear the worst of it. Early, before the lash-marks ceased to sting, the movement hurt his back enough to wake him. Later, it mostly hurt his ribs.

He does not know why he is thinking of this now. He does not know what woke him this time.

The room is dark.

“Father,” he whispers, his voice hoarse and shamefaced. He—he is not used to calling out that word, that name, and it chokes him a little. He has spent so many days here thinking of nothing, and now—and now—

The matches are kept beside the lowest of the gas-lamps. Maedhros fumbles for them. When he has managed to light both match and lamp, he sees that the room is empty. Father Clement’s bed is rumpled and, to a touch of the hand, cold.

_He is spying on you. He drugs you to uneasy slumber and then slips out to report—_

This is a cold sensation of doubt and fear that Maedhros is well able to laugh away bitterly. _Let him spy_ , he answers. _He’ll find no new truths._

That, and he knows that Father Clement is his—

_Friend, no, no, not that, never that, he can’t be that._

Maedhros paces the room. He sees himself in the glass (this has happened, in the weeks gone, enough to steel him to the image) and his eyes appear as scorched holes in a paper face. Had he wept in his nightmare, too? Can he remember it?

He does not call for Father Clement again.

The unmade bed—something nudges against his foot, or rather he has brushed against a fallen jar. Camphor.

Was there a struggle?

Valerian; the usual dose. He slept.

Maedhros runs a hand through his hair, in unbroken habit, though it has grown long enough to be tousled again. The sole gas-lamp only serves to throw mad shadows all about him. The bottles ranged along the shelves and table are hunched like gnomes; the beds are gaunt-shouldered peaks on the walls; the door is lined in deeper darkness.

The door is _open_.

 

He knows a trap when he sees one. He does. He simply never knows what the trap will take from him.

Maedhros paces the room as he has a dozen or a hundred or a thousand times, and the door opens only half outwards because _something_ is in the way.

The something groans.

 

( _Where are we going?_ )

 

Father Clement is bleeding from the mouth. This, Maedhros ascertains by a brush of his fingers. Neck and breast and arms are unshattered and whole. It is only—

To hear that sound from another’s body is so wrenchingly cruel that Maedhros would rather it be drawn again from himself. He does not need to explore further, with his shaking, useless hands. Father Clement’s legs are broken. More than his legs. The bones of his hips and—but what good does it do, to know that?

 

( _Here is Athair, fallen. Trying to get up. So many twists of limb, so much fractured light in his eyes. He asks,_

Where are we going?

_over and over again, so many times. There is so much time._

_The beautiful boy at his side has a soul, and yet knows nothing._ )

 

(In some ways, this never ends.)

 

“I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.” Does Maedhros beg for mercy three times, or do their voices overlap each other? Does Maedhros lift him in his arms despite the piteous groans and cries? Does he have the strength? Is it kindness that makes him act so? Is it kindness that gives him strength?

_Love—stabbed—love—_

However it comes to pass, however motivated it is by fear or something greater, something rooted deep, Maedhros lays the body down on his own bed. Living, butchered, ruined, old.

At least this body is _old_.

(This does not help him. Does not help either of them.)

“Terribly sorry, you should not—” Father Clement’s voice is wrenched for him, and his face contorts until it no longer seems human.

All Maedhros can see is the cross on the forehead, and the dark blood staining the sheets beneath him. Both are not quite _red_.

He has—what can he offer?

“Sorry?” He kneels, though the priest never asked him to. Kneels, by the side of his bed, and does not see anyone else in the room.

There is no one else in the room. There never is, anymore.

( _Where are we going?_ )

(Anywhere but here.)

“This is to hurt you,” Father Clement rasps. “I wish you would not let it—not let it hurt you, Maedhros.”

There is no river, no mountain, no sky without grief. He lived under that world, and that world left him. He has spent weeks afraid, desperate, _dreading_ , hoping. He has lived through them all, and somehow Maedhros, at his most shameful, always seems to pretend himself better than despair.

He has never thrown himself away without a backward glance to see who followed. When death became desire—and it _is_ desire, he sees that now—he spent only days acknowledging it as lost to him, before his fitful dreams whispered of new possibilities.

(The dreams where he…)

“Rest easy, Father,” he whispers. “Please. Please, it will be over soon.”

“I take one last gift,” the priest answers. His eyes are unfocused, his skin grey and draining. It will not be long.

(It will not be soon enough.)

“A gift?” And somehow, Maedhros’s hands are wrapped around Father Clement’s hands. Somehow, Maedhros is no longer the one to be pitied.

“However—however much time—I pray—you—for you—”

There is no one in the room, but there is always someone at the door. There is blood and a bullet, a father and a useless son.

There is always a trap laid for the fear Maedhros attempts to keep safe within him. He will never be clever enough for this cruelty.

(What other talent does he have than beauty, dog-loyalty, and the trigger-quickness of his right hand?)

(What remains?)

"For you," Father Clement manages another moment of terrible clarity. "For you, this. Not--because of you. The gift. Pain is the gift."

Maedhros does not want to understand. Yes, here is desire! Here is selfish choice aplenty.

"Don't," he says. Urgent. Bloody-handed. He has said other things like this. "Please don't."

 

“You are dying,” Maedhros says, in the shaking pause that follows. “Do not worry, Father. You are dying.” He slips one hand free of the ruthless grip, the grip born of agony, and reaches behind him.

“No,” Father Clement cries.

Maedhros was clumsy; there was a clatter beneath his fingers. He should be better at this. In the old world, he never missed.

 

_I know you know where the blades are._

The sky, azure-bright. The river, swallowing. The mountain, deep as a heart beneath ribs.

_Where are you going?_

 

“I can free you,” Maedhros says. He does not understand, because he is not meant to understand, why the priest’s life was taken although Maedhros kept his word. Does not want to— _cannot—watch—_

Or maybe he _is_ meant to understand, and his word _was_ broken, because he lived with too much rooted in his chest.

( _Watch this._ )

 

The old man is lost to pain again. It would not be _fair_ , to take him as he thrashes and shrieks, so broken that he is made unrecognizable, mute in mind if not in voice.

Maedhros holds him down, and hates that it is right to do so.

 

“Maedhros, my son—it would not be _right_ —”

“Then I shall wait.” He does not say for what.

(Every moment is a goddamn wound.)

 

Father Clement’s breathing slows, steadies. He does not die.

(So long. Too long.)

 

“Pray with me.”

“I no longer know how to pray.” The brand on his breastbone feels as if it will never heal. What is that, to a dying man?

Nothing. It is nothing to a dying man, which is one among many men whom Maedhros may never be.

 

(He cannot even hope for slavery, now.)

 

“Mairon, I failed. Not you. You are too good for me—” Father Clement gasps. “To ruin. Too good for me to ruin.”

“Thank you,” Maedhros says, and means it, means it through the salt-warmed mist over his eyes.

“Pray with me.”

 

 _You have forgotten nothing_.

 

With his lips, he smiles. With his right hand, he makes the sign of the cross.

With his left hand, he plunges the scissor-blades past ribs and through to heart.

He does not miss—


	10. more dangerous than fears

“How curious to think,” the man says, his voice hardly louder than the soft snick of the scissors, “That this was a place for healing.”

The boy (the monster) tilts his head forward at the nudge of the man’s fingers against his neck. He shivers not only at the touch of the comb’s teeth to his scalp, but also, seemingly, at the touch of nothing. His whole thin body shakes until his teeth chatter, until the man clamps his hand on one trembling shoulder, bare beneath the rough grey blanket.

That blanket was one of the few not stained with blood.

 

(Maedhros knows that Father Clement is dead, even though he is still warm, still moving. _This_ will be over soon, that is the way of it. Over soon, for Father Clement.

There is very little light, but that seems to be of no consequence; red and white flare before Maedhros’s eyes as he reels back, back from what he has done. He misses the gaze and the voice of the priest so utterly already. A sob wracks him, but it is less a sob than a gasp for air.

Maedhros remembers, too slowly and stupidly, that he can die, too. There is no one to stop him, this time, not even Father Clement, who might have tried.

The priest’s corpse-face—corpse-rictus—does not look to be at peace. He was a good man, and he suffered for it, and now he has been murdered by Maedhros, whom he served.

Maedhros’s hands are ugly with blood. He feels dull, particular fascination for how it covers his nails. All of them are as good as torn away, now; they would look no different gone.

_That would hurt more._

He drags out the brutal shears from Father Clement’s side.)

 

The man sets the scissors down. There is a small basin of water on the stool next to him, and a sliver of soap. He wets his fingers and the soap, in the water.

“Not a proper lather,” he says. “But it will do.”

The boy (the monster, tamed) says nothing, even though the water and foam are cold on his skin, where the man’s thumbs have pressed.

“Maedhros, I am proud of you.”

Nothing.

The man laughs a little. There is a faint rattle of metal, not the shears, and he holds a straight, biting razor before the boy’s eyes.

“This would have done it, lad. It would have done it quickly. Was that what stopped you? That it would not be over soon enough?”

 

(Maedhros has the blades in hand, and the blood everywhere else, and he shuts his eyes before he opens them again, for he _killed_ the old man, and must now look at him—

He keeps his eyes open and he grinds his teeth and the blades will strike him where he struck the priest, a final proof that it _was_ the kindest way.

The blades clatter at his knees. He picks them up again.)

 

The boy does not breathe. The razor scrapes at the nape of his neck in little, coaxing strokes that do not draw blood.

“I am making a proper man of you again,” purrs Morgoth, Melkor, Bauglir, _him_. “You have looked like a beggar too long.”

Still, no breathing. Morgoth reaches round and turns him by the chin, grazing the straight blade beside one ear, then the other. At last he sets it down, and takes up the cursed shears once more.

He cleaned those blades himself, after he washed Maedhros’s hands.

 

( _You want this_ , Maedhros tells himself. _More than anything, you want to be free of this._

Father Clement’s staring eyes cannot see him. Father Clement’s soul—and Maedhros knows he had one—is gone.

_More than anything._

But _anything_ is metal and blood, treacherous and slipping between his fingers. He wraps both hands around the blades, and angles them towards his heaving ribs—scarred, dented, awful ribs.

He hates his body fiercely, hates himself fiercely, and drives the shears inwards.)

 

The comb tugs straight the uneven locks of hair. Morgoth clips slowly, steadily. Maedhros blinks down at his hands. His laced fingers are crooked with tension. There are no shackles on his wrists. He hasn’t been shackled for days.

A red curl drifts, catching on the hem of the blanket. Morgoth draws a fringe over his forehead, coming round in front to turn Maedhros’s head from side to side with his cold palms over Maedhros’s ears, as if to be certain that his work is even.

Father Clement’s body is gone. One of the men—was it Murphy? Does Maedhros remember?—took it away.

 

(He doesn’t—

Again, his mercy falls.

He tries a third time, and then he is too much a coward to even try again. He covers his face in his hands before he remembers what his hands have done. There is blood smeared on his cheeks, he feels it stinging below his eyes. He sobs, and Father Clement cannot hear him.

Morgoth finds him like that.)

 

“You murdered him willingly,” Morgoth says. “May I ask why?”

Maedhros will be punished if he does not answer. That is the way of things. He does not know what he is anymore, if not a creature of others’ making, ruled by others’ whims. _Speak thus and you will not be punished, for a little while_ ; _act thus and you will become the thing you hate._

(He hates—)

Morgoth’s hands are no less gentle for Maedhros’s silence. He shafts the comb close above Maedhros’s left temple, and the scissor tip brushes the curve of Maedhros’s ear as the shears cut over it.

“I shall not toy with you any longer.” Morgoth’s voice is soft, like his hands. Soft and horrible—but it is also all that Maedhros both remembers and still knows. Morgoth is the only one who has him, now. Father Clement is gone, and the old memories are—are gone, and he is never going to die because he does not want to. He _must_ not want to, since he could not kill himself.

 

(Morgoth lifted him up by the gory hands. Morgoth turned him from the body. Morgoth called for water, stripped him of his fouled shift, bathed him like a child.

Morgoth took death safely away.)

 

“I will tell you what we know of you. You are afraid of death—but only of _your_ death. There is a deep, quavering selfishness rooted in you. I have tried to pluck it out—more than that, I have had Mairon try to beat it out of you, to no avail. You will be ever the boy who clings to his shadow, won’t you? You may not always attend your desires, Maedhros, but you _do_ follow your needs. Doggedly, and to whatever end.”

The blanket has fallen, exposing that meat-ugly flesh of the shoulder that Mairon carved and burned with brutal precision. Maedhros is still looking at his hands, but in another moment Morgoth lifts up Maedhros’s face, cool fingers stroking his cheek and the blades forced beneath his chin.

“I want you to look at me,” Morgoth tells him. “Because you are made new at last. I never wanted you to lose that selfishness, Maedhros—I wanted to see if you _could_. Pride, I cut from you. Purity—well. You know that old story, and Mairon has made certain you will not forget it. Honesty and prudence and even Feanor’s ideas of scorn were trained and molded. Now, you are _my_ son.”

Maedhros has tears left, it seems, after all he shed for murderous anguish. As they fall, Morgoth brushes at them with a finger.

“I would not have wished to watch the old man struggling for death either,” Morgoth confides. “Strange—” and he _smiles_ —“That he _wanted_ that.”

 

( _Sit here, my boy, sit here. See, they have taken all the stained things. Goodness, Maedhros, I always come to find you covered_ _in blood—but this time it is not yours. There is progress, if you like! Progress._ )

 

“He wanted to live a little longer, suffering in the Christian manner of sacrifice.” The shears are still poised under Maedhros’s jaw. Thrust forward, they could pierce his throat.  

Maedhros wonders if pain frightens him, still. Was that why he could not bring himself to—

No. It is as Morgoth says. He fears his own death, holds to his own life, no matter the price made payable.

(Morgoth promised that he wouldn’t hurt the priest.)

(Maedhros broke his word first—not to Morgoth, but to _everyone else._ He pretends he has forgotten their names.)

Morgoth removes the shears and takes up the comb again. In this last week that Maedhros did not know was _last_ , he had allowed himself some slight _comfort_ in the familiarity of hair grown long enough to run his hands through. It was unsightly, yes; a wild shock of ill-cut locks, far from their old length and luster. But still his, and still growing. To have it cropped again, not ruthlessly but tenderly, is bitter enough even without the hateful nearness of that cold metal.

Morgoth’s cruelty is so often close to kindness.

(The first time shears ever touched Maedhros’s head as a child, he wondered why they did not hurt him—)

“Much the better,” Morgoth purrs at last. His large hands brush the dusting of hair, the fallen curls, from Maedhros’s neck and shoulders. Then he grasps Maedhros’s chin in his hand. “Yet: you are beardless. So was your father. Not by choice, then—a family trait, or are you still too young?”

Maedhros can only dimly remember the feeling of having a family. He spent _those_ moments out like coins to win Morgoth’s favor, and won exactly nothing.

One steel-strong hand caresses the hollow of his cheek. It is always thus; a constant, possessing touch. With the other, Morgoth reaches to the stool beside him, for a little tin of something that, when opened, smells violently of pine.  

Morgoth lets him go, and rubs a bit of the pine-wax on the teeth of the comb.

Maedhros flinches. It is enough to be treated like an animal; another matter entirely to be made one with _him_. But he has no right to dignity, and he knows it, and Morgoth knows it, for Morgoth smiles.

“I told you,” he says. “You have earned your place; you have passed my tests. Yes, even this was a test. _Will the boy who still keeps safe his father’s secrets, who pretends to honor his family name, put himself before a friend, when the time is wise?_ And you did, Maedhros. You did.”

 _I hate you_ , Maedhros wants to say. But maybe—maybe _hate_ is too far-gone a word, too much a belief that he has done anything but surrender utterly to Morgoth’s designs. He says nothing. Morgoth parts the shorn hair sharp as an incision, combing it flat down to one side. The scent is overpowering; Maedhros wishes there was enough in his belly for him to be sick.

(He was sick already, this night, or this day, whichever it is now. He coughed up bile and yesterday’s gruel after the priest’s savaged body was dragged away.)

“Rise,” Morgoth commands, and Maedhros does, grateful, at least, to be ordered rather than asked.  

The room sways around him. It became a place of comfort before, though it shouldn’t have been, just as his curls were a comfort that he should never have trusted. Here in Father Clement’s infirmary, the bottles are still in their old places on the shelves; the gas-lamps glow as they did by day and night.

Morgoth takes the blanket from his shoulders and he shivers, his patchworked skin raising in gooseflesh.

It is always cold in the infirmary. It is always cold, in the mountain, except for the forge.

“Ho, there!” Morgoth calls, over his shoulder. “Bring it in.”

The door opens to admit the lackey waiting on the other side. The lackey is Murphy, and he smiles scornfully at Maedhros, who does not much care whether Murphy mocks him or not. Shame does not belong to Maedhros, today.

“Leave us,” Morgoth raps out, and Murphy is gone again. What he brought is laid on Maedhros’s stripped bed.

 _See, they have taken all the stained things_.

“It may be a little ill-fitting, but will suit you nonetheless.” Morgoth is pleased. He lifts up the dark-dyed shirt, the black wool coat and trousers, the plain waistcoat. There are stockings and shoes also. “Put it on, lad.”

(There _are_ memories, of course, that he never told Morgoth because they were not requested—were not precious enough to be requested. The distinct pride of a well-tailored jacket, glorious down to each shining button. The smell of shoe-polish. Do these memories still exist because there are no faces in them?)

Morgoth helps him tug the clean cotton over his shoulders, helps him with the fastenings. There is a stiff, proper collar, such as Maedhros has not worn since the east. Morgoth’s smile has not abated. “This shall cover that sore signature of Mairon’s,” he says. “What the devil was he thinking? Perhaps just that; perhaps he was thinking of his devils.”

There are no pins for the cuffs.

“We must be careful with you,” Morgoth reminds him, his lips breaking into a full grin. “You and the sharp ends of things.”

 

(Father Clement cried out, at the moment of death, as though the pain Maedhros caused him was _so much more_.)

 

Morgoth holds up the glass and Maedhros must look at it. What he sees is a thin face under neat, smooth hair. The face is his own, and still fine-featured. The bones are unbroken, despite the faint yellow bruises gilding them. He is covered, at last, from the neck down.

It does not feel like safety.

“Are you ready?” Morgoth asks. “My son, are you ready?”

 

(Maedhros saw his father die.)

 

(When the man led the boy and bade him sit, he stroked the rough curls and frowned.

 _Maedhros_ , the man says. _I can call you Maedhros again, now. I can give you back a name, I think._

The boy’s hands twist as if choking something.

 _No,_ the man says. _I don’t think I could ever be sorry, for finding you._ His hand rests in the boy’s hair, teasing it out strand by strand to measure the length of it, but he reaches out with his other arm, a long arm, and seizes the lonely blanket hanging from a peg on the wall.

He arranges it around the boy’s shoulders, and the boy says nothing.

With both hands, the man tugs it close like the two sides of a collar, and with a smile on his mouth, he stoops down.

He kisses the boy’s forehead, and the boy cries.)

 

“You have not seen this before, have you? But after all, I must dine somewhere—and though it is a bit rough-cut still, we will make something fine of it before the year is out. In the South, there were no mountain strongholds to speak of. In New York, my castle was rather more a prison. We must reach far afield for Mount Olympus, must we not? Bulgaria, or Germany…the fortresses on the _Rhine_. Did you ever travel abroad? You would enjoy it greatly.”

The long table is only lately swept of dust, and dust gathers anew, snowed from the ceiling, as Maedhros watches. This is the room just opposite Morgoth’s study—for Maedhros knows the network of these halls better than he knows his own mind anymore.  Great wooden beams, cased at the edges with steel, support the walls at their corners. Maedhros wonders, between the throbbing image of Father Clement’s mangled death and the curious sensation of being fully, properly clothed, if Morgoth’s mountain will fall upon them over dinner.

For dinner is laid before them: there are steaming plates of beefsteak cooked rare, roasted potatoes, rich brown gravy. Maedhros has never wanted food like this, and does not want it now. He sits in the chair Morgoth offers him, hands curled against his knees.

The wool of the strange trousers is too fine-woven under his palms.

Mairon will no doubt appear at any moment. He will enter on panther-silent feet, with his knife very bright and loud in his hand. Morgoth will laugh, and Mairon will take Maedhros away, no matter how he begs. Mairon will cut off skin as well as clothing, will exact punishments befitting such a chosen one, such a wretched dog—

“Eat,” Morgoth says. “Maedhros, you are skin and bone, and not so much of the former as to make me forget your perilous nearness to the latter.”

If Mairon brings him almost (but never quite) to death again, who will mind his wounds? Will Morgoth choose another innocent, another life for Maedhros’s swollen tally? If he does, will Maedhros be able to save that life?

(He will not.)

“Maedhros.” Morgoth’s tone sharpens. He has given a command, and Maedhros has not heeded it.

Bewildered, he stares down at his plate. There is no fork, no knife at hand. Blood pools in the hollows of the meat.

“Do you mislike your hands? Have they served you ill?”

He killed without thinking. He has always, when he kills, done so without thinking.

“Very well then,” Morgoth says. “You are so delicate—one forgets this, of course, rather easily, seeing you savage the man who bound your hurts for weeks. Or was it months? I came close to forgetting _you_ , you know, and indeed I might have, had you not a little hotblooded brutality burning under all that pain. I left enough weapons there for you to kill the priest and yourself. You made the right choice.”

“All because,” Maedhros says, holding his teeth together as he used to, to stop their rattling, “I would not answer your questions about my father?”

“That is not the choice I spoke of, but it did determine the test I put to you, yes.” Morgoth slices his meat cleanly, lifting a dripping forkful to his lips. “In truth, Maedhros, I learned all I need to know about Mithrim—from _you_.”

He never told. He told the whole sad story of his life, yes, and it was one he held dear. It was also nothing. No secret, save his. No use to Morgoth, save for cruel humor’s sake.

“Our guest will join us in a moment,” Morgoth says. “And you shall see what use you have been to me.”

 _Mairon_. Amber eyes and dog-toothed maw. His hands, in Maedhros’s mind, are always red.

Maedhros is still frightened of pain.

Morgoth stands, leaving his meat half-finished, and strides to the door. He opens it, and he says, “Come in, my friend—”

Maedhros plummets from the cliff, or the world does. Maedhros is ground beneath the roar of iron engines, or his ears are. Maedhros’s chair is kicked down behind him, so forcefully does he rise.

The ceiling crumbles, and remains whole.

 

“Thank you, sir,” Ulfang says, bowing and smoothing down his stiff beard with one hand. “It was a hard ride.”

 

(Mannish hair and a frank face specked with freckles, tanned dark even by the spring’s sun. _Jem_.

_He’ll manage our company. It’s all a matter of protecting the gates and perimeter, and soothing ruffled tempers. He’ll make sure no one causes trouble._

Maedhros is too numb to feel relief, but he feels—something. He turns, and he looks

the man

in the eye

 _looks him in the goddamn eye_ and says—

 _Thank_ _you_ , with as much heart as he has ever said anything in his life.)

 

In the seconds before Morgoth drags him back, fingers digging hard against his pain-streaked ribs, in the seconds before his temple bleeds against the table’s edge, Maedhros has his hands around Ulfang’s throat.

 

There are a thousand ways to betray one’s family. The only way that matters is the one that will hurt them. Will the betrayal daunt their steps? Cloud their hearts?

Sign their death warrants?

Maglor is gentle, Celegorm reckless, the rest of them _so_ young. Maedhros counted on _himself_ , on the hurt to _himself_ —believed that his treachery yielded pain enough to mean that no more harm could be done by it. What did it matter if Morgoth knew that Maglor was easily flustered, that Celegorm was hasty in anger? That Maglor cared for Maedhros’s opinion more than anyone else’s? He could not reach them in _that_ way, could only hope to achieve his ends through violent force, not through intimate knowledge.

(If he thought of them as children, perhaps he would forget that they were men.)

 

 _Traitor, traitor, fucking traitor, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you,_ what did you do to them—

 

“You have disappointed me greatly, Maedhros, and dishonored our guest.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Maedhros spits. He spits blood. “You hell-spawned demons, the lot of you. I’ll fucking—”

Morgoth has _him_ by the throat now, and even that is not enough to choke off Maedhros’s spewing fury.

“What,” Morgoth asks, “Will you _fucking do_ —to _me_?”

Maedhros claws at him. Throws the weight of his body, as best he can, against Morgoth’s knees. Morgoth rewards him with a vicious kick to his ribs, and that is too much, all of a moment, too much for breathing—

Maedhros fights through, _will not stop fighting_ , but there are more hands now, too many hands. He is lifted to his feet and then forced down, hard, into one of the upright chairs. He flails and strikes and even bites a fleshy hand—the curse sounds like Murphy’s—but he does not have the strength in his limbs to win.

He is tied down with a length of rope and a man’s belt.

“You pitiful scoundrel,” Murphy growls, nursing his bleeding hand.

“Fucking bootlicker,” Maedhros spits.

“Gag him, you fool,” Morgoth barks. Murphy snatches a spare kerchief from his pocket, twirls it like rope, and forces it against Maedhros’s teeth. Maedhros nips him again for good measure. Then the knot is tied hard enough to keep his lips peeled back painfully, and his teeth are useless. The rag tastes sour with sweat.

Maedhros shivers. Murphy cuffs his ear in vengeance, and steps back.

“Get out, the lot of you.” Morgoth’s face is flushed. Ulfang, in the doorway, is peaceful to a fiendish fault.

Maedhros breathes hard through his nose. Behind his eyes flash pictures, memories, that he hasn’t seen in a long while, and futures that he never _will_ see.  

“My most sincere apologies,” Morgoth says thinly. “For the shocking behavior of this rascal. He will be roundly punished.” His eyes settle on Maedhros for a moment, cold with black anger. The tenderness of those earlier hours: gone.

The weeping boy of those earlier hours—

“It’s understandable, sir,” Ulfang says, all calm respect. “Must’ve given you quite a start to see me here, hey, Maedhros?”

 _Safe_ , Maedhros thinks, if it is fair to call the aching chaos within him a _thought_. He left Mithrim _safe_.

For that he bore—the shame, the pain, even the refusal of death. For Maglor, he did not leap. For Celegorm, he goaded Mairon into cutting him open. For his brothers, he killed, and for those kills, he counted lashes as best he could. Even when he was broken beyond the point of memory, beyond seeing their faces or hearing their voices, he had that. Like a prayer, or the beating heart of one.

“Be seated,” Morgoth says, righting the chair that was Maedhros’s. “Eat, and tell me what has changed at Mithrim.”

Ulfang plods around the table’s end, keeping clear of Maedhros’s legs. Maedhros’s legs are yet free; his chest is secured by the belt and his wrists are cinched to unbearable tightness. He is… _weak_ , but he would do it all again if he could. He would kill them, if he could.

(He would not kill himself.)

“The entrance to the mine is somewhere under the fort,” Ulfang says calmly, tucking into the steak with a knife plucked from his own pocket.

Maedhros grinds his teeth against the gag.

“This does not surprise me,” Morgoth answers calmly. “We knew that it was accessible from inside Mithrim; the question was only whether it was fort or forge. Have you found its _exact_ location?”

“Curufin—”

Maedhros flinches at the sound of that name. Sees clearly the pale face, so like Athair’s—but younger, brighter, evermore afraid.

“—disappears for hours at a time. I’ve scoured the grounds and he isn’t there. Then I find ‘im wandering the halls with dirt smudged on his face and hands. Awful cagey. ‘Course, the lot of ‘em are. There’s only one room I haven’t searched, and that’s Rumil’s old study. Must be there.”

Morgoth drums his fingers on the table impatiently. Maedhros is trying to remember when the visitor was announced—was it by a message passed outside his sight, when he was weeping amid Father Clement’s blood? “Why haven’t you searched it?”

“Maglor has the key.”

He must not weep, now. He must not weep again, so soon. He sobbed over Father Clement and he sobbed when Morgoth—

But he is shaking, his knees are trembling. His chest falls in shallow-caverned breaths. He forces his tongue against the twisted cloth; it does not loosen.

“Maedhros,” Morgoth says, without looking at him, “Are you in distress?” To Ulfang, he says, “Maedhros has told us a great deal about his family, as you know. If Maglor has the key, what is your plan to get it from him—using what Maedhros gave us?”

“They keep watches,” Ulfang says. “Celegorm’s idea, most likely. I’ve never met such a suspicious little bugger. Well, ‘cept he isn’t little—strong as a bull and just as like to see red.”

_Celegorm, I need you here. You are the only one who can—_

“Ah, yes, Celegorm. As I told you at our last meeting, the way forward is to divide Maglor and Celegorm. Maglor does not feel appreciated by him; does not feel _valued_. And you said that Celegorm in particular is grown snappish… _brutal_ since he lost Maedhros.”

“Yes, sir. I think our greatest hope, simply put, is that they’re all lacking in sleep. I’ve seen what exhaustion can do to men, and these are hardly men. Little Amras is like a motherless babe, and Lord knows Maglor can’t fill all the empty shoes. He’s—Amras, I mean—taken to following around that whore, Mollie—the one as passed on your message—”

“From Thuringwethil, but of course. You are no closer to guessing who killed her?”

“Celegorm seems likeliest, as I’ve said. They don’t speak of it, now.”

“Continue working on Maglor, then. He sentenced Maedhros to death, you know. I have not a doubt that the fact is still eating at that tender, talented heart of his.”

“Very well, sir.” Ulfang clears his throat. “And there’s something else. Curufin may be beginning to suspect me. He’s sharper than Celegorm, sir. Right clever.”

“Curufin was his father’s protégé,” Morgoth muses, steepling his beef-stained fingers. “And thus the best expert on Feanor’s craft. We can’t finish _him_ , yet. You said he is closest to Celegorm?”

“If he’s not disappeared, he clings to him like a shadow.”

“I would almost suggest that you kill Celegorm, but then again, he is our best chance of turning your men against Feanor’s once and for all. So…volatile. Can you provoke _him_ to kill? Maybe one of your women?”

Ulfang nods. “I’ll see what I can do, sir. He saves his regrets for after his bullets, if he even has any.”

Morgoth smiles. “Do it quickly. As I often tell their brother, here, we do not have endless time.”

Maedhros’s heart thunders in his ears. The feeling of Ulfang’s pulse, tantalizing close beneath his fingers, is not the game at all. Morgoth can and will subdue him. Morgoth took him from a man who could run and fight and kill and made him beg on his belly. Morgoth—

Every exchange with Morgoth is a bargain, and Maedhros has— _had_ —refused to accept that.

“Maedhros,” Morgoth says, as if he can sense the changing winds of pitiful strategy…

 _Celegorm, I am sorry. Caranthir, I am sorry. Maglor, Maglor, Maglor_ —

“ _Maedhros_.” Morgoth is beside him, Morgoth is dragging his head back, not by his hair, but by the full weight of one clenching hand. Nimble fingers undo Murphy’s hasty knot, and then Morgoth tugs the gag free. “What have you to say for yourself? Should we expect more ugliness? More curses?” The spit-soaked rag, he drops in apparent disgust.

Ulfang eats methodically, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, but his eyes are fixed on Maedhros’s face. Maedhros knows because he is looking at him.

Morgoth, still holding his head firmly, backhands him across his freed mouth. The familiar sting brings water to Maedhros’s eyes. Maedhros says,

“Ulfang, they are only boys.”

Another blow. He tastes blood on his lip.

 _Only boys_ —Celegorm, who shot a man to save his dog, and Curufin, who devoured his own soul over one bullet. Maglor, wringing his hands for the sake of a broken harp. Caranthir, in his blunt sincerity, speaking more truths with his eyes than the rest of them do with their tongues. And Amras, Amras, the youngest, no more than a child, half of a whole.

Ulfang was with them not two days ago. Ulfang _saw_ …

“Please,” Maedhros says hoarsely, now that he can speak again. “Please. They did not ask for power—let them go—”

(He told Morgoth everything. Their hearts, their secrets. He pretended that they were his to give, his to destroy. It was all to save himself a few inches of skin.)

Athair, in the past, speaks to the urgent present.

 _You must be able to protect your brothers, just as I protect you_.

Ulfang says nothing. Morgoth says, instead, with a huff of astonished laughter, “Please? Do you beg, Maedhros? After that display?” He shakes his head, raises his hand again, and drops it with a sigh when Maedhros tenses. “You gave me hope last night,” Morgoth murmurs, only for his ears. “Now, you have dashed it.” He returns to his seat at the head of the table.

“A month from now, construction of the railroad will resume in full,” Morgoth says. “Gothmog oversees the building of new holding quarters for our laborers. But there are already shanties out by the tracks. We will have wages for any men who wish to join that number. Think you that some of Mithrim would be willing, Ulfang? How fares Rumil, these days?”

“I keep him drugged, as you ordered.” Ulfang swallows a potato. “He hasn’t woken up more than a moment. Doesn’t say much when he does.”

“Good. I would not have you sacrifice your position there by delivering him to me, just yet.” Morgoth finishes his meal, pushes his plate away. A clod of soil tumbles from above to wobble beside it. “Now, what is your count? Who do we have, among the _eligible_?”

“Seventy-nine in the fort. I would say I could take thirty with me, easy. All good, solid men. Scouts, trappers, hunters. Of course, we can’t know till it gets down to it, if they’d sway. I’d stake my all. I would.”

“I _am_ ever in need of skill,” Morgoth agrees, with a smile. “But that still leaves you at a disadvantage of numbers, and unless we can support you—which you know cannot be easily done without fording that cursed waterway—I think Mithrim might burn, and all its secrets with it. The principle of the thing,” and here he drags the tines of his fork against the pad of his thumb, “Is to preserve that which is precious, even if the filth must be _blasted_ from it. Delicate carnage, especially when there are…children involved.” The legs of his chair shriek against the unfinished floorboards. Ulfang stands also.

Maedhros is thinking of his brothers, who live, and of dead Amrod, and Athair, whom he left them to bury.

Athair, who—

Of course. It would have been Ulfang who took Athair’s head.

Maedhros cannot kill him. Maedhros is useless as a corpse in a casket, for all that his heart still beats. Maedhros has nothing left with which to bargain. His eyes swim, and Ulfang’s black beard seems to consume his whole bland, blank face. Maedhros says again,

“Please. Please do not—please, _are they well?_ ”

(He did not mean to ask that.)

“You see?” Morgoth’s voice rings out. A question, meant both for Maedhros and _not_ for him. “He is so easily crushed. Did you know that, before? What _did_ you know of him, Ulfang?”

“He was trusting,” Ulfang answers. “Far too trusting. I’m sorry, Maedhros. Life ain’t cards, boy.”

“Ulfang is leaving now,” Morgoth says. “He has a long journey ahead of him, but on the other side, he will meet the brothers you sold me. I ask you again, Maedhros. What have you to say?”

“Sir,” Maedhros says heavily, as if his tongue must carve out the word and lift it up, weighted as a stone. “If you will spare them, I will—”

“Sir?” Morgoth shakes his head. He comes close, very close, but he does not touch Maedhros as he is wont to. “Come now. You can do better than that, in apology.”

Maedhros wets his lips. “Please, sir. I will do anything.”

“No, no; I know you will. It is the _title_ I decline. Before you threw aside my favor, what did I tell you? What did I _name_ you?”

_Must I endure the begging of my eldest, along with everything else?_

A specter rising, a memory to which a face belonged, but does no longer.

Maedhros says now, as he did then—

 

Ulfang’s boots tread out of sight. Maedhros’s cheek sings with dull pain. Morgoth’s fist caught him hard enough, after all, to topple his chair and leave him curled on his side in a tangle of bruised limbs.

The belt still keeps him tethered to the hardback. His hands cannot reach each other.

Again, _helpless._

Morgoth’s shoes stride to the door, and he shuts it. He says nothing for a long time. At last, he laughs more softly than when Maedhros cried out, _Athair, please_.

(He laughs just as long.)

“Thank you,” Morgoth says. “You have satisfied me, even though this story could have ended differently, had you been more willing to serve. Self-preservation failed you at last, eh? What a time to choose.” He turns the doorknob; at least, Maedhros hears him turn it. He cannot see Morgoth’s hand.

Maedhros never knew much. Never—never hoped much. And yet, it is as if he is come back to himself, back to the gaping wound that is _Maitimo_ , eldest and first and last in love.

He bites his tongue; his tears are spent.

Morgoth says, “Goodbye, my boy,” and goes out.


	11. where the shadows lie

When the door opens again, Maedhros does not know how well he has counted the time gone. His ribs seem to grate against each other with every breath. He imagines—he hopes—that Morgoth’s foot left no more than a bruise, but he cannot be  _sure_ , and the memory of Mairon’s savage blows causes him to writhe and gasp a little, his legs jerking while his arms are still immobile.

Even during the weeks when he could not stand without support, Morgoth kept him tied down more heavily than this. Where lies the mockery, exactly, in how much difficulty he faces now, trying with all his strength to get free? He has only contrived to make his wrists sore by the time another pair of boots is before him.

“I’ll be damned, boy,” Gothmog says, stooping to lift the chair, and Maedhros, upright. “Whatever you did must have him hopping mad.”

Maedhros has not seen Gothmog since the man turned him over to Morgoth. He realizes that the transaction is reversed now. There is no gag in his mouth, but his tongue is mute.

“Look at you in fancy-dress.” Gothmog cuts the rope at Maedhros’s wrist neatly in one place, and slices through Murphy’s belt with the same eager-bladed knife. “Can’t see how those’ll keep, where we’re going.”

He stands back, waiting for Maedhros to get to his feet.

Gothmog is heavy-shouldered, thick-limbed. Maedhros will not win a fight with him. Gothmog will not hesitate, also, to club him over the head.

“Aye, I know what you’re thinking. Do you rush or go rabbit? I’ll tell you. I’m taking you down the mountain, and I don’t aim to have any trouble along the way.”

_Down the mountain._

(This is not freedom.)

“We’ll go on foot,” Gothmog says. “Plain hell, but you’ll manage.”

 _Easier for a slave to die_ —

Maedhros cannot. Cannot die.

Does not  _want_  to die, if it means that Maglor and Celegorm are left at the center of Morgoth’s mind, two opposing keys to unlock Mithrim; if it means that Morgoth’s strength can grow, if it means that everything he thought his death or almost-death protected is, in fact, laid bare—

Maedhros  _does not want to die._

“See here,” Gothmog says abruptly. One massive hand thrusts forward and seizes Maedhros’s collar. “What have they done to you?”

Maedhros hears the rough sawing of his own breath.

Gothmog’s face carves its own frowns, like mud-silt paths in the river delta of its cheeks and broad chin. “I don’t aim for trouble,” he repeats. “But it finds me. You more trouble than you’re worth, boy?”

One of his hands slaps around the back of Maedhros’s neck. With the other, he drags Maedhros’s wrists behind him. Then he sets to work looping the rope around them, drawing the knots tight.

 

Down uneven corridors, on the other side of hell and Morgoth’s twisted angels, down rough-hewn steps that Maedhros does and does not remember—

“You’ve been here before,” Gothmog says, in answer to the question unasked. He shoves open a door, and shoves Maedhros after it.

 

The air is dense and rather cold, like his old cell was. Maedhros scrambles up to stand, his eyes becoming used to the light of the single lantern Gothmog brings to life with a struck match. Gothmog sets the lantern on a plain table, plucks a wad of tobacco from his pocket, and fills his lip.

“I’ll tell you this once,” he says. “And only once. My pa taught me to play chess when I was a sight greener than you. Five, maybe six years old. Told me all I needed to know about the world was in that game.” He pauses, shifting the chew from one side of his mouth to the other. “I hate that bullshit,” he says. “I’m not Bauglir. You’ll get no games from me.” He takes a step forward, heavy as a stormcloud lowering, and adds, “Here’s what you will get. You go one inch out of line, I’ll beat you back over it. I’ve whipped men to death, when that was the best way to work ‘em down, but I done it rarely. I keep what’s mine alive, and I keep it in order.”

The silver handle at his belt gleams. His knife gleams silver, too, as he cuts Maedhros’s bonds.

“Strip,” Gothmog orders, settling down into the only chair in the room. “So I can see what they made of you.”

Maedhros fixes his gaze on the flat darkness of the room’s shadows, and shucks off his coat.

 

“Hell,” Gothmog says flatly. “That’s the ugliest work I’ve seen in some time.” He rises, spits, and reaches for Maedhros’s shoulders. Slowly, he turns him round. Blunt fingers press at ribs and old brands. Maedhros cannot keep his silence for all of it. Every hiss of pain elicits a harder prod.

“You’re almost goddamn useless.” Gothmog’s fingers tighten against Maedhros’s burned shoulder until he flinches and tries to recoil. There is nowhere to go. “Almost. No use underground, at any rate—but I’d already made a place for you at the front. Now that’ll change.” His small eyes glitter with contempt. When his gaze drifts downwards to the letters carved at breast and waist, he sneers.

“Price to pay for all you once were, was it?”

Maedhros does not answer. Gothmog does not require him to answer. Maedhros, when he is certain that there is nothing more to be seen, reaches for his clothes.

“As I said before, you ain’t keeping that dandy get-up. Put the shirt and trousers on for now. Leave the rest.” Gothmog is not quite his height, but that no longer matters: Maedhros rarely straightens, what with his ribs and his back and the desire, of many weeks, to go unseen. Gothmog does not have far to reach, then, when he runs his fingers through Maedhros’s hair.

“I’d know that stink anywhere,” he says, cracking another devil’s grin, to temper all his impatience. “And to think, he had enough of you.”

 

Maedhros has not breathed clean air nor felt the touch of sun since he, in fear for his selfish beauty and in a reach for selfless love, stood under daylight and did not fall.

 

(He chose death after that, or tried to, but it spat him out.)

 

Summer has come despite him. Time is pinned down, and for a slave, time is another barred door, not a passage. Maedhros wonders if, given the choice between a ruined body and his brothers’ peril, he would choose nobly. Better, than, that he has  _no_ choice save for continuing onward. As a slave, he can live. As a ruined body, he can care not at all for himself. Morgoth will likely not kill him while there is still enjoyment to be had, and there is enjoyment, surely, in watching Feanor’s son cower and labor.

He has a few weeks at least.

 

On the way down Diablo’s rusty flanks, Gothmog allows him to keep his shoes. It is utility, not kindness, and in truth it is barely even that. These are fine leather; they are not made for the mountain descent.

Neither, in the blinding sun, is Maedhros.

They leave Morgoth’s fortress by finding their footing along a lip-like overhang that plunges down into the lower hills. If there is an easier way in and out of Angband, it is not for a thrall’s eyes.

Long ago, he climbed this during a devouring night. He fell then, and he falls now, almost at once.

His legs are weak. His breathing is uncertain.

Gothmog mutters an oath and hauls him up by his bound wrists. Mairon did not scar his wrists by torment, but the shackles have. Likely, the skin covering those slender bones will never wholly be new again.

Maedhros feels sweat crawling down the newly shaven nape of his neck. He can still smell the loathsome pine mixing with the cleaner, dustier scents of the outside world. He still hates it.

“Keep going,” Gothmog says, eyes hard under the broad brim of his hat. It is a warning.

The mountain behind them is a vast wall, and the world beneath them are trees, brush, reddened stone—all humble, rugged beauties that Maedhros thought lost.

Instead, this is the same silvered sky his brothers see.

The same sky under which Ulfang rides.

Maedhros falls again. More simply, his knees buckle and his head swims, aching as a bullet wound bleeds, steady and sluggish. He  _is_  bleeding from the temple, a little, at the sharper point of pain where he struck the table. His ribs swallow him.

“Alright then,” Gothmog says from above, as if deciding something. “Stay down.”

Maedhros hears more than sees the sound of the whip being unfastened. Hears, certainly, the whistle of its descent, before it snaps across his hunched shoulders. He has reacted, in time; he has brought up his arms as best he can, to shield his head.

It hurts. Even after—he is surprised how much it hurts.

Gothmog stops after the fifth lash. Maedhros has groaned in the back of his throat, but has not opened his teeth. Has not screamed.

“Get up,” Gothmog said. “You’ve had your licks. Time to step livelier.”

His back is striped with familiar fire. Maedhros tries to remember his knees, his hands. He must rise unhelped; he must prove himself. Why can he never prove himself?

 _Think of them_ , he presses, treating each name like a needle.  _Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir_ …

He is on his feet. He is blinking in time with the drumbeat of sunlight.

Gothmog looks him over, winds his whip around his hand and says, “I’ll be. You really are looking mighty green.”

Maedhros sways and says nothing. Gothmog does not ask for  _yessirs_. Says,  _stay down_ , but does not say,  _kneel before me and pray._ Maedhros will give what is asked, on the road ahead, but not with his heart in it. He is never letting out his heart again; fit, as it is, only for trampling.

Maedhros is going to be whipped again, he thinks.

Gothmog’s grin is slow as the turn of a roast on a spit. “I wouldn’t have thrashed you if I knew you wasn’t putting on a show. You really are as broke as I feared. How they whaled you—you that much of a scoundrel, boy? You that much of an uppity bitch?” He reaches into the satchel at his hip, draws forth a round leather flask. “Have a sip. It’ll do you.”

Maedhros does not stretch out his hands, for he has been tricked before. Gothmog huffs a sigh and holds the flask against his mouth, tipping it back until the spill runs down, and Maedhros again can only guess that punishment will follow any protest, so he drinks of the whiskey offered. It is piss-warm and tastes more like barley than it should.

Maedhros—Maedhros has not drunk of spirits since Morgoth last compelled him to. He should be ruled by pains and passions, by what his body and soul have become rather than what they ever  _were_ , but instead he has found himself sorely missing the drinking, bytimes. Sorely missing what it means to drift into the cotton-white mist of  _gone, gone, gone_.

It would not be easy in Angband, but it would be easier than by any other means, to become lost.

The hike down takes nearly three hours, by Maedhros’s bleary-eyed count. Gothmog does not, in fact, whip him again.

 _Another way,_  croons Athair in memory. _There must be another way. This is too long and hard a path._

 _I learn only for them, Athair,_  Maedhros answers gently.  _Not for myself._

Athair is quiet, after that.

 

“Now you might wonder,” Gothmog says, during one of the brief periods when he has considerately (too considerately) let Maedhros rest, panting gratingly, “Why we’re headed dead straight for walls as ain’t even roofed yet. You’re seeing a place at its birth, boy. You’ll be training it up. Master Bauglir has the railroad as  _his_  concern, and I’ve got slave-rats such as yourself to look after. You know you’re a slave-rat, don’t you?”

This seems to require an answer. Maedhros nods.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t impress me,” Gothmog says, prodding him onward again. “Doesn’t mean anyone can’t impress me. But you’ll have a hard time, boy. A harder time than most.”

He slows their pace on the outskirts of his shanty empire. The structures, some still roofless, sprawl out around them like any number of mouths. Maedhros can see the grey ant-bodies of workers filing in and out of the quarters, following wagons that disappear over the flat dry land. Wherever they go, they always seem to move in wavering lines.

Maedhros’s brow is slick, perspiring. His eyes run with dust and weariness.

His back is beginning to be stiff as well as scraping sore, but it is almost over.  _This_  is almost over. They have reached the wagon circle of long, low buildings. It doesn’t look like Mithrim and its single fort.

(Ulfang won’t have arrived back at Mithrim yet. That means Maglor and Celegorm aren’t facing him, just now. A redheaded ghost, lithe and beautiful and inexorable, man enough to save them, wanders those far-off halls, watchful and waiting.)

(Maedhros could not be that man, even in death.)

 

Gothmog leads him to the place that has the tallest walls, the best-finished roof.   
  
_The guardhouse_ , Maedhros thinks, and is struck with the bolt of old Utumno, of Athair in his glory, and Athair with Gothmog’s bullet surprising in his chest.

Maedhros jerks to a halt.

“After all I said,” Gothmog drawls, cuffing his ear hard enough to make his aching head spin. “Get on then, afore I finish striping you where you stand.”

Maedhros steps forward. This is not the place where Athair died. It is where Maedhros must learn to live.

He does not recognize any of the men who look up from their pipes and cards. A few rise, as if they intend to have words with Gothmog—who is, no doubt, their leader—but they recede when they see that he is not alone.

Gothmog does not speak to them, exactly. He only grunts a greeting, then stumps to a chair in the corner and sits heavily. Maedhros stands, wracked with exhaustion, shaking and sore. He dares not move further.

There is a snicker around the table.

“One of you,” Gothmog says, “Get him some kit.”

 “Didn’t know we were taking gents now,” one of the men mutters. “Look at the—”

“Come here, boy,” Gothmog says, and the ripple of conversation is quenched. Gothmog does not beckon like Morgoth. There is no eagerness about him. He mops his brow with a tattered handkerchief, packs his lip with tobacco, and crosses his ankles.

Maedhros steps forward. There is not much to trip upon, save the knots in the floorboards, yet he half expects to fall.

“This one here,” Gothmog says, raising his voice a little, “Is a limp-limbed varmint. Nothing to him but bones and spite.” He nods at the returning man whom he sent away, whose arms are full of ragged grey. “Put it on,” Gothmog orders. “Don’t be modest.”

Maedhros’s heart throbs in his ears. There is a battlefield before his eyes, and it is built anew. He will not win by—

He will not win.

The shirt Morgoth dressed him in hours ago is rank with sweat and clinging to his back. If the welts there have bled, it will sting badly to tug the cloth away. Maedhros does so anyway.

Gothmog whistles when his shirt is gone. “Don’t need a number by which to call you, do I?” he says. “Lord, I’ll not get used to this. Still a sight.”

Maedhros hears the mutterings, the low hums of appraisal, from behind. The men in the room are taking their measure of his ruined back and sides. No doubt they wish they could see what Gothmog is looking at, what cruelty Gothmog  _reads_ ,but they are his underlings; they will not ask.

Maedhros dresses as quickly as he can. He is a child because Morgoth made him a child, but he swears he will now be one in body only, not in spirit. His arms and legs are weak and not his own, his skin is tender and raw and ruined. Yet, he is not going to beg, here, at the foot of Morgoth’s mountain.

He is going to endure, until his body can hold him up.

(This is the first time he has ever believed that a body like this could be of any use.)

 _For a time, Maitimo_. He imagines those words in any voice that will strengthen him.  _Only for a time._

The shirt and trousers he is given are rough and ragged, as are the worn shoes. He bites his tongue as he dresses. Gothmog doesn’t so much as blink.

“Master Bauglir told me about you,” Gothmog says, when Maedhros is finished. The black garments he was given in the foul night are crumpled at his feet. Maedhros is sorry for many things, but not sorry to be rid of them. “Told me more than one man should care to know about another.”

The room goes quiet. All men love secrets—the crueler the better.

 

Gothmog brought a satchel with him down the mountain. He has it slumped beside him now. He slips one hand inside it.

Gothmog says, “Bauglir told me— _be careful of that one. He bites_.”

 

Blood seeps through Maedhros’s teeth. The flat-plate bit cuts at tongue and cheek and the tender flesh of his gums. It scrapes and gashes whatever it touches. The straps pass above and below his ears and fasten firmly at the back of his head. The panic, rather than the pain, is what threatens to overcome him; he can breath only through his nose. He can scarcely swallow.

Cannot be  _free_.

Gothmog, though, seems heartened. He seizes Maedhros’s shoulders in both hands, and turns him round to face the pipe-smokers. “A picture, ain’t he?”

The men laugh. Maedhros is shivered through with wild, anguished hatred.

He thinks of Maglor again; of Maglor’s wide, sensitive eyes and poet’s mouth, so often frowning. For Maglor, Maedhros did not fight when Gothmog forced open his jaw with his blunt fingers, when Gothmog slipped Mairon’s ghastly contraption over chin and cheeks, fixing the bit beneath his tongue.

A horrid fate, surely; but to risk the damage of further brutality would do Maglor no good. Maedhros must have time to think clearly, and the raw discomfort, the degradation, is not the worst that hell can offer him.

He knows what hell has to offer. Before Ulfang raked him to heaped coals of desperation, he thought it was all he knew.

“We’ll try it for a week,” Gothmog murmured to him, anyway. “Let you make the rounds. You keep civil, I’ll be satisfied.”

If it is a promise, Maedhros thinks he will keep it. Gothmog is not Morgoth. Gothmog does not care for games.

(Morgoth must have been very angry.)

(Morgoth must  _still_  be angry.)

(To be muzzled is a small price to pay, for that.)

 

Maedhros doesn’t know the names of the men who take him by each arm and march him out the guardhouse doors, across the dust-fallowed ground. Workers in the same grey issue as he now wears strain under beams and slats. Like him, they each bear one heavy ankle shackle, so that they may not run.

All that is left to finish of Gothmog’s compound are its coverings.

Maedhros had a hand in the building of a barn, once. He remembers vividly the day of the roof-raising. It was something of a fest for the neighboring families. There was music and dancing and bounteous food, and when the sun drank deep of the sky in its setting, he and Celegorm lay on beds of hay and looked through the last uncovered rafters to watch the pearl-pinned stars.

“I ain’t never seen the like,” the man on his left says, and he lifts his knuckles to rap them against the metal flank of Maedhros’s jaw. Even the slight impact is jarring. Under sharp white pain and betrayed by his uneven stride, Maedhros staggers.

“He’s delicate,” the other man says. “That’s what we’re told. Still standing and fighting with a back that flayed—but he’s  _delicate_.”

The grey shapes ahead blur, then go still.

“Look lively,” calls the man on his left. “The lot of you. You’ve a new dog to kick when you’re down.”

Eyes are on him, once again. Maedhros’s right to shame is a laughingstock in itself of late; he has been mocked alone and in numbers, he has screamed and begged and failed and rallied. All of these things have led him here, and thus there is little use in blushing, in averting his gaze from the ogling curiosity of Morgoth’s—Gothmog’s—slaves.

They are men and women, sunburned and thin-ribbed and hard. Maedhros has Mairon’s eye emblazoned on his neck, Morgoth’s punishment strapped against his teeth.

Even here, he must be different.

Even here, his punishment defines him.

“You there, Soldier.” It is the man at his left speaking again, and he addresses a slave with a bruised face, square-jawed under shaggy hair. “Send him down with the brats.”

 

The brats are mixing tar. Their black-streaked faces are too starving to be impish or innocent. If Maedhros were to guess, the youngest is a girl of eight, a bird-legged scrap of a thing, and the eldest a boy of sixteen, reaching no higher than Maedhros’s shoulder.

 _Delicate_.

He has been put to work among children—and they are children, even here, just as his brothers are children in the ways that matter most. He tries not to see Amrod in their faces.

He is overcome with a wave of sudden helplessness. He cannot speak to them. Their eyes are wide and wary, and why should they not be? He has come among them like an ugly, mangled ghost, half his face an armored wall.

 

When the sun is set, Maedhros’s hands are burned and stained. He is unsteady on his feet, and twice a whip (not Gothmog’s) has cracked down his back. He blinks and thinks of Caranthir, perhaps eleven, in a summer that found them all together where they ought to be. Caranthir, in this memory, is crouched at the edge of a row of potatoes.

 _I shall never do anything again_ , he says, his whole square face a frown.

It is not a fantasy, this. It  _is_  simply a remembrance: Maedhros can see it in the corner of his mind’s eye, but he does not lose sight of the tar vat and the huddle of bodies moving slowly—away. Away?

No one speaks to him. The children are gone away.

A blow to the back of the head, sends him sprawling. He catches himself on a freshly finished board and comes up with one hand dripping black and sticky. Frantically, he scrubs it against his thigh.

“You there, metal-mouth,” says the guard. “Chief’s looking for you.”

Maedhros looks at him. The movement of his head is excruciating, as the edge of the bit, sliding under his tongue, cuts a new ribbon of the soft flesh there. He tries to swallow the pain, and the whimpering sound that accompanies it, but it is difficult to swallow anything at all.

 

“Holy cats,” says Gothmog reverently, as Maedhros retches blood and frothed saliva onto the floorboards, when the muzzle has been unfastened. “You’re not going to want much supper after that, are you?”

Maedhros is not able to be grateful for the freedom of unbound hands, but he clenches them into fists nonetheless, knuckles braced against the twisted knots in the unvarnished wood. He is on his knees, not because Gothmog bade him to fall there, but because he has nothing else in him. Nothing that could keep him on his feet.

Gothmog is turning the shining silver, scarlet-speckled frame round and round in his thick hands. “This is…something. Something of its own.”

(If this were Morgoth, Morgoth would tell him to beg.

 _Kneel, Maitimo, kneel and ask me prettily._ )

“Sit up, boy,” Gothmog says. “If you can. I’m not itching to cradle you like a babe and spoon-feed you.”

Maedhros spits again, shaking at the very  _wrongness_  of his lacerated mouth, and tries to speak.

The result is horribly garbled. He does not even understand the words himself. Is this how it shall be if they tear out his tongue?

Gothmog sets down the ask on the floor beside him. Maedhros remembers that he has been commanded to sit, and does so, his hands on his knees, his head swaying.

“I’m at something of a crossroads,” Gothmog says. His hands are on his knees, too. There is no one else in the room; this is Gothmog’s private chamber. There are shelves and a broad bed, half-concealed by an oil-skin curtain. There is a rough table and two chairs. The place smells of smoke and sweat, though Maedhros hardly notices that. “Find your voice, so we can conversate as we ought.”

Maedhros swallows. It has been—it has been not even a full day since he woke in the empty infirmary, calling out the priest’s name. How is he still—

He isn’t. He cannot move, cannot speak. Exhaustion is banked back only by pain.

“Water?” Gothmog asks, reaching for a skin.

“Yes.” It takes all he has, and the word is slurred hideously at that.

Drinking is dreadful, but it does ease his speech a little.

“You bit Bauglir?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Surprised he didn’t take your teeth.”

“He did.”

Gothmog chuckles. “So each mark on you is  _purposeful_ , just as I thought. You a thief, boy? I saw that brand—given it myself, in fact.”

Maedhros does not remember what he is supposed to have stolen. Gothmog does not wait for an answer.

“Mairon’s the one who carved  _whore_  into your belly, ain’t he? I’d stake a hundred dollars on it. There could be a dozen reasons for that, but I’ll spare you the embarrassment. Bauglir told me the story himself.”

Maedhros’s nails—all nine of them, and nine quite cracked and filthy—sting against his palms.

“Between you and me, son, they did you a dirty deed. You could have been—but never mind. I told you I’m not Bauglir, and by gum, I’ll prove it to you.”

Maedhros swallows harshly.

Gothmog stands. “I reckon it will get powerfully dull, bringing you in here each and every mealtime for me to tinker with that thing in your mouth. I reckon I’ll have to force cornmeal and meat down your throat myself. I don’t particularly fancy that. Do you?”

A gamble—a risk—a test. Maedhros never knows which one it is. “No.”

Gothmog lifts one blunt boot, and brings it down again.

Maedhros hears the crumple of metal before he understands what he sees. When he understands what he sees, he cannot quite believe it.

The mask, flattened, beneath Gothmog’s foot.

 

"Work with the brats, sleep with the brats," says a burly man with a shrubbery of beard on his neck and jowls. He looks with disgust at the dried blood ringing Maedhros's mouth, and aims a fierce kick at his shins.

Maedhros bears it, getting back up without giving him the pleasure of a sound.

"Lay off, Lem," says the shaggy-haired Soldier, the one who silently led Maedhros to the tar vats at Gothmog's command. He strides forward, strong and almost even despite the weight of iron on his ankle.

Maedhros was a dancer, once. A fencer and a sportsman. The legs that bore him then have no resemblance to the treacherous, weak limbs that barely hold him upright now.

Lem steps aside. Soldier approaches to striking distance, hard dark eyes scraping over Maedhros's face. He does not sneer at his bloody mouth; he does not sneer at anything. He is like stone.

"Try your twisted tricks with any of the little ones," he says, all quiet menace, "it'll be worse for you."

Even without cold, biting steel in his mouth, Maedhros cannot ask what he means.

(He can guess.)

Thus muted by weariness and gnawing hatred--for himself almost as much as Bauglir or Gothmog--he nods, and follows Lem's mocking gesture to the rear of the camp.

 

The brats share their quarters with supplies and a few of Gothmog's men, disgruntled subordinates from the looks of them. Maedhros keeps his head bowed as he walks past the lot, and even so, a chewed wad of tobacco strikes him on the ear, to satisfied laughter. 

Through a curtained doorway, he finds a dozen or so small bodies. They stiffen at his entrance. He remembers that he is tall, and made hideously memorable by his marks--visible and invisible--even without the muzzle binding his jaws.

The beds are raked straw. One of the girls moans in her sleep. Maedhros flinches at that, at a sound he has heard in his own throat too many times. 

His mouth is like an open wound. His body is bruised and still... _in shock_ , suggests that kind cousin-voice, out of the deep. Weeks ago  now, Fingon came to Maedhros, and one failed the other. 

Maedhros, sinking down on the straw, sends Fingon away.

He isn't dying. He can remember, intimately, what it is to  _want_  to die. He will always know that tantalizing mercy of forever-darkness.

Here is his pain: searing, stinging mouth; raw-striped back, bruise-angry ribs. He counts his fingers, and his brothers.

When last he fell asleep--

There is only so much a spirit can bear. Maedhros is too tired for weeping, too stymied in thought to properly punish himself. The memory of Morgoth's cutting hands, of Father Clement's blood, of Ulfang's peaceable stare...these would require more strength than he has left.

With no end in sight, he falls asleep to the distant sight of his brothers' faces, and knows not to what he will wake.


	12. even the smallest

Maedhros decides to count his days.

The sun’s heat, the dry air, the dust-draped wind—none of these feel the same against his body as they did when he was whole. He is stiff and frail, short of breath no matter how slowly he moves. He stoops as he stands, half to conceal the height that might seem like a threat to the suspicious men, and half because his back is plagued by a persistent, gnawing ache. Though it is children’s work, he falters through mixing tar and brushing it over the long roof slats, through picking stones out of post-holes. At the end of each day, he is… _hungry_. Hungry, although he does not want to eat.

Eating is not an easy thing for some time—as if it ever was. By the ninth day of his new life, Maedhros dreads meals only a little less than he did the first morning after Gothmog took Mairon’s cruel device away, a morning with a mouth so stiff and swollen that the pain of it felt itself affrighted. He only drank a little water, hunched on the floor beside the women and the brats, and as privately as he could, he sopped bites of bread in it, placing them between his cracked lips and breathing deeply through his nose so that he might calm the impulse to spit out even the smallest morsel.

He has toyed, at night, with the relative safety of memories. He finds it is too risky to let himself dwell long on faces and voices; on laughter and whispers and _names_. Yet, from boyhood, he was taught and trained, both by those who were his elders and those whom he let himself love greatly.

He tries to remember those lessons now, without their teachers. That is why he counts the days—because he knows, vaguely, what time it takes for a body to heal after grave hurts. If he is to be strong enough to prove himself, he must be in some semblance of health.

Morgoth always scoffs at him, in his mind, when he thinks thus. Thinks of _health_. But Maedhros has learned humility at the knees of cruelty, and he sets his teeth carefully in his sore mouth. The empty socket of his molar was barely healed before the flesh of his gums was freshly tattered.

He has a purpose here, and it is to learn again.

There is much to observe. The men are not all animal ferocity beneath dead-eyed servitude. When the overseer’s back is turned, they mutter to each other in low voices. Sometimes there is even laughter.

 _The structure of a family_ , Maedhros’s grandfather used to say, sighing, _is like spider-silk. Delicate, if you do not understand it. Strong if you do._

Maedhros had no fondness for spider-webs, then or now. He does, however, have stakes as high as any were in childhood. He must understand how the thralls of Angband, the impressed labor-force of Manwe’s Westward Expansion, work together—if they truly do.

First: the Soldier, who looked at Maedhros with rank disdain in his eyes, is their leader. He could easily be thirty or fifty, given his sun-bleached hair and grim, gaunt face. Maedhros is cautious in watching him; he must not be seen, or singled out, as a spy.

(They think him worse than a spy.)

The rest of the workers are a motley combination, some stripling boys shrinking from the snap of the whip, some men with iron muscles, whose corded scars do not stilt their plodding efforts. There is a steady stream of paid railroad laborers, serving as overseers, who are not so very different from the ranchers and merchants who followed Athair west.

 

In the morning, they rise before dawn. The youngest overseer—a straw-headed Norwegian named Larsen, eager to prove his worth by digging his heels into the backs of his underlings—is charged with ringing the bell so loud and long that Maedhros’s head rings with it. Breakfast is a meager affair, jerked grey meat and greyer bread, eaten as quickly as possible. The board-table they kneel at is too small to serve all, so the women and children crouch on the floor. Above them, the roof gapes like a mouth missing teeth.

“We’ll finish today,” Soldier says, in answer to Lem’s mumbled question. There is no more talking as Larsen and Goodley—the quiet one with a stout cane instead of a whip—inspect them in line. Before going out into the yard, rags are soaked in water and tied over the head or around the neck, a vain attempt at keeping cool.

The thirst that comes with sweating for many hours, from the curse of all visible skin burning and peeling, is like nothing Maedhros has known since those first bleary days in Morgoth’s cellars.

He cannot see the whole of himself, life and scars, to determine the degree to which he is utterly changed.

 

The women are far from beautiful. Most are missing teeth, and their hair is shorn ragged, little longer than the men’s. Still, one above all is defiled by workmanship that Maedhros recognizes down to the marrow of his bones: her lips were cut in a grin almost as far as her ears, healed badly. She has only one eye.

He looks at her; he cannot bear to look at her.

He has always hated ugly things.

 

Maedhros’s hands are burned and never clean. At nights, he picks at the sticky tar-traces that have hardened on them. He is in danger of losing another nail; the middle finger of his left hand was bruised badly by a stone. The sounds of breathing around him are familiar in only the most painful ways. He used to find such comfort in the murmur of his brothers’ sleep, but these are not his brothers and Maedhros is too tired and too uneasy for rest to come at all.

There is, on this ninth day and all those preceding it, no sign of Gothmog. Certainly no sign of Morgoth, who bid Maedhros farewell amid his gloating disdain. Maedhros has wanted to believe himself forgotten, before, and has always come to regret his faith.

How his brothers would rail! _The son of Feanor_ , Morgoth used to call him, before he called him _Maitimo_ , and _my boy_ , and finally, _my son_. The transfer of ownership was complete before Mairon branded him like a beast, before Gothmog ordered a shackle hammered round his ankle. Morgoth would say the moment was the moment of their meeting, on a long-ago April night. Maedhros, perspiring and hideous and never-quite-forgotten, supposes he must agree.

 

(The hierarchy, then, is thus: the boot, which is all of Gothmog’s men, and the dirt, which are the slaves beneath. They once might have been counted as belonging to a dozen different races and creeds, but now they are one—the race of the oppressed, the creed of survival.

In terms of boot and dirt, Maedhros is somewhere farther down than that.)

 

Maedhros meets Frog almost a week after he first joins the slaves. He thought, at first, that Sticks was the youngest of the “brats”—Sticks being the thin, towheaded girl who looks no older than six or seven. Of course, malnourishment can make such things difficult to ascertain. It can make a man look ancient and a child phantom-frail. Most of the brats are half-grown boys, or girls who Gothmog’s paid laborers drag out for nights of what can only be sordid merrymaking. Maedhros, the coward, shuts his eyes and stops his ears, then.

Maedhros, the coward, is meant to be healing—and thus he does nothing.

So: all of them are too thin and weak, but Frog is smaller than any of these. 

 

With the roofs finished, the overseers send them out half a mile or so from the camp, in groups of five or six laborers. Easy to chase down, should there be any attempt at mutiny.

(There is no attempt at mutiny.)

Their purpose is to turn over new land. Maedhros (in different days) would scoff at the prospect of green and growing things being cultivated by hard-faced men and crawling slaves. But then, he ought to remember the ugly happenings of the Deep South, from whence Gothmog hails and Morgoth also—

In between other horrors, Morgoth took him to a dark room of ugly creatures and creations. There, he called him a gentleman, as if they were the same. Perhaps there is no contradiction, if Olympus after Olympus is raised by blood.

 

There is less freedom in these field excursions, though the sky opens wide around them and memory beats like hooves on the ground. They trek the grass-tousled tundra linked by chains at the waist, and the sun is just as hot as that which him each day in the compound yard.

Maedhros must fight the temptation to lurch, to wrench himself futily from the line of men.

He lets a beating memory in, for distraction, and it is this: wandering the city streets for the first time alone with Maglor. He was fifteen, and Maglor was thirteen. The cobbles were slick with rain and filth, yet they were _adventuring._ The urge to grip his brother’s hand was strong.

 _Do not run away_ , he wanted to say, as if Maglor was prone to such things. Maglor was not bold Celegorm, or one of the twins—

Maedhros bites his tongue and keeps his footing. When they reach the plot of land, the chains are unfastened but the heavy belts remain. Again, this is to keep them from running—but as with mutiny, it is a false risk to Maedhros’s mind.

Where, exactly, would they run?

 _He_ cannot run anymore. Running is not the plan. Escape is not the plan. That is the only thing about him that has not changed, since he wept and retched on the floor of his cell, and knew that Morgoth would not kill him.

(He is so afraid of Mairon, still, that it takes his breath away.)

 

On his knees an hour later, wrestling with a particular stubborn rock, Maedhros hears a rustle in the copse of shrubs nearby. Gothmog’s chosen lot of land skirts a creek-bed, since that will supply a ready water-source.

The rustle could be a large animal, or a small human, and when at last the thing creeps into view Maedhros is still not certain which it is, because it stoops—like he does.

At last he decides it is a boy, one who would not reach Maedhros’s hip if Maedhros stood at his full height, and the boy at his.  The boy has a shock of black hair slanting over his forehead. He wears only a filthy pair of trousers, rolled at every hem and yet nearly slipping off him. He hunches his spine—and seems to be crawling on all fours.

The boy straightens abruptly. Maedhros sees eyes that are wide in a dark face, black as river-stones.

Maedhros is thinking of his brothers.

The boy makes no sound. He folds himself and his spindled limbs back into the protection of the thicket.

Maedhros does not see him for the remainder of the day.

 

He has an easier time with his bread that night. Perhaps this is what he needs; distraction, without grief. He is thinking about the silent child and the land lying all the way between here and Mithrim. How many people might live and hide here, coming almost into contact with Morgoth’s expansion before they learn to keep away.

He chews gingerly but swallows almost easily. There wasn’t a _here_ , in the mountain. It was a place without dimension, except for pain.

(Was Father Clement even buried—)

He stares down at his roughshod feet. He is standing tonight, back against the wall. He is crumbling the bread with his right hand, cupping the mess in his left hand as if he will fling it to birds.

Sometimes, he sees birds again. Their singing storms his ears.

(Mairon left him his ears. Mairon left him his eyes.)

He shudders and chokes.

Across the room, the Soldier’s eyes are on him, narrowed and hard.

 

He hasn’t had nightmares because he’d wake from them, wouldn’t he? Wake screaming. He lies flat on his back, with all his bones held stiff and high, since all his bones ache. It is not a screaming ache. It is, however, a nightmare of another kind.

 _Kneel, Maitimo. Rise, Maedhros._ The pain goes on and on until he sleeps, and when he meets the morning to find the world quite grey, he aches as fiercely as before.

This, although he rested.

Maedhros does not sleep through the night, after that day out in the fields. He opens his eyes to the dim silence before dawn. His vision adjusts to the not-blackness almost as a cat’s might.

He spent time within the mountain and under it, time in real darkness. Has he been… _bettered_ by this? Digging his fingers against his hips, he imagines the pale hand on his hair, on his skin, stroking him beneath the chin, creeping over his cheeks.

Imagines, without wanting, that praise.

_I have made something of you._

_I would rather be beaten then offer you thanks_ , Maedhros answers fiercely, but he knows that isn’t always true. He can’t depend on it always being true. Sometimes, after all, he is very weak.

He wants to turn on his side, for that is how he used to sleep and habits die hard; as hard as _he_ dies, which is to say, never. Sometimes his hands still slip up to play in what is left of his hair. He still chews his lips. When he watches the world move around him, learning his place in it, his tongue counts his teeth.

 _That_ last unconscious comfort has changed, of course. There is one less, now, and he shudders despite himself. Morgoth reminded him that it might have been an eyetooth, reminded him to strike a bargain so long ago in the gloomy cell. Of course, that was an offer and a threat made to a weeping child.

A dead child, save for these recounted habits.

The night air is sullen. There is no wind. Maedhros does not turn on his side. But he does sit up, hoping it will make him rather more tired (or more able to sleep, when he lies down again), and thus he sees the little stooped shape again, across the floor, crouching.

“Eat,” whispers Sticks. She is kneeling, a slight sapling creature in her rags. If there was a breeze at all, Maedhros thinks, he wouldn’t even hear her.

The smaller child—but how small they both are!—snatches bread from Sticks’ hands and devours it. Maedhros wonders what their names ought to be. Wonders why he moved at all, without thinking, as if he was alone.

 He is easily watched here, and he does not want them to see him. Does not wish to disturb them, in what seems to be a moment of peace.

“You sneaking today,” Sticks says, very low again. “None o’that.”

The little one makes no answer.

Maedhros leans on his hands. His wrists are sore. It has been something of a luxury, to have them shackled less often, but the benefit is overtaken by the punishment of toil. His softened callouses offer little protection. The work makes him bleed.

Like Shakespeare dared to say, long ago, _so much blood in him_.

_You still remember—_

Yes, Maedhros remembers. Never _very_ clever at his studies. Only brilliant in reflecting back what he was taught and told to become.

 

There is nobody to safely ask the nature of the small boy, who seems both free and not. Maedhros, having slept fitfully the rest of the night, sees no trace of him in the morning. Sticks is always wary and keeps away from him, though she watches him almost more than the other brats. They no longer mix tar, since there is no need for it, but they carry logs that the men split. Firewood, which, since it is still summer, is either for the coldest days of winter yet to come…or for a forge.

A forge is more likely, since winter does not run cold here.

 

Maedhros is not kept with the men, not treated as the men are, yet he was sent out to the fields with them.

He wonders why.

Is Gothmog watching?

Is Morgoth?

Whatever the answer to those questions may be, he is given answers and questions of another kind when the late supper is over, and he follows the women and brats to their quarters. He keeps his head down, for it has been a day of shame. He must be healing; there is more time for memories in him.

Today, he has thought of every moment that he cowered and begged, every moment that he wept or cried out. He was so bold at first. Fighting back. Biting. Clawing. And then he became a quivering thing that found something like pleasure in the mocking kindness of blows withheld, irons laid aside.

He rallied, in the end, but that is only confirmation of earlier failures.

What would greater bravery have looked like?

What does _he_ look like?

(He knows. He knows it will not change. Yet the mind is a fickle, hard-hoping thing, and it _asks_.)

Two figures block him from entering the sleeping quarters. He recognizes them.

 

Maedhros is used to having the breath knocked from his lungs. A body, though. A body will never learn not to fight, wildly, for survival. In that way, it is like the mind. So: if body and mind are both against him, one by obstinacy and one by taunts, what remains?

No, think not of that. The only truth that matters in this moment is that Maedhros’s body could not be trained otherwise, even when his flesh was carved and torn and burned away. His body, when stitched back together, _fights_.

“You there,” Lem says, boot poised for another kick. “We know what you are.”

The Soldier stands impassive, arms folded over his breast.

Maedhros knows what he is. Has always, maybe, known that.

“Pretty face fallen from favor,” Lem says, surprisingly eloquent. “Trying to worm your way back.”

Maedhros is not sure what the safest answer will be. He shifts from his side to his knees, sitting on his heels. Old brands and new skin still hurt, but it is familiar pain.

“A man,” says the Soldier suddenly, his voice deep and gruff but not necessarily cruel, ”ought to stay with the men. You are kept with women and children. What are you?”

 _Now, you are_ my _son._

Maedhros shivers.

“Used-up,” Lem says. “He’s used-up.”

Night has set in. There are other slaves milling about, but no overseers nearby. No one sees fit to interfere in the quarrel of three shadows, half-hidden by the mess-hall roof.

“If you’re a traitor,” the Soldier says, “not much we can do to you till judgment day. But if—”

“If you’re a sick one,” Lem interrupts. “Thinking you can put a hand on the brats, we’ll—”

“Quiet, Lem.” The Soldier doesn’t raise his voice. “He can guess what we’ll do to him.”

 _Death._ The word throbs in Maedhros’s ears without anyone needing to speak it. “Can you do nothing,” he asks, keeping his eyes fixed on the Soldier’s ragged knees, “To protect them from the guards?”

(A coward can do this much.)

“You want a mutiny?” Lem demands. “The mouth on him. No wonder they kept you muzzled.” He is a large man; he could shake Maedhros like a puppy if he wished.

Maedhros blinks, still staying down.

The Soldier is quiet.

 

The next week brings an outbreak of leprous sores among some of the women. The red pox on their faces fill Maedhros with dread he does not deserve to feel; other than a little pain, what does he have to fear for disfigurement?

 _I do not want to be made ugly_ , protests some stubborn voice. To quiet it, he forces his fingers to trail the waist of his trousers, that he might feel the bramble-ridged knife-scars, that he might not forget, even for a moment, how ugly he is.

He does not break out in sores. Nor does Sticks. Nor does the woman whose face is etched with old wounds.

Maedhros asks no questions, even when he begins to suspect that there is no disease at all.

What good would questions do?

 

Of nights again, he thinks of Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir. They are eldests, now, though Caranthir may never believe himself worthy of the title. If only he would!

Caranthir has a knack for peacemaking, Maedhros believes. With time, he could find it under his simmering impatience—

But there isn’t any time.

Maedhros has been a slave under Gothmog’s leadership for twenty days, known himself to be a brother-traitor for twenty days, lived as Father Clement’s murderer for twenty days and half a night. He shouldn’t let himself think of his brothers, but he _only_ allows himself to think of them.

Even Athair is ousted from his long-held authority, to make way for the young, the breathing.

In Maedhros’s dreams—those he remembers—he is throwing an arm around Maglor, reaching not-so-very-high to ruffle Celegorm’s hair. He is memorizing their crescent-moon grins and lonely eyes, as if he doesn’t already know them best of all.

This is defiance, of a sort. The kind of defiance that can keep a man who does not love his life, alive.

Maedhros, curled on his side with his battered hands tucked against his chest, acknowledges that he _did_ die in Morgoth’s tender care. A good many selves died, that is. He is—fortunate—that the oldest self survived.

Give him only something to protect!

He is half-asleep when the muffled cry wakes him. When the twins were—when Athair was gone—Maedhros walked many a hall with warm, sleepy bundles cradled in his weary arms, at ten and twelve and fifteen.

It is a particular way of being lonely and loved all at once.

Here in hell, he should not answer any cries. Did not the Soldier give him a warning, punctuated by Lem’s kicks, not to meddle in the affairs of others?

Always, too, Gothmog may be watching. _Morgoth_ may be watching, because he is never far enough away.

Maedhros lies still for a few seconds more. The men spent the last two days digging a deep root cellar at the edge of the compound, and though Maedhros was not charged with the duties of pick or shovel, he helped to cart away the soil and sort out the rocks, that the earth might be used for sod bricks and the stones to fortify the growing surround.

Gothmog, seemingly, was not satisfied to build only with wood.

All of this to say: Maedhros, forgetting (briefly) his scars and dwelling dreamily on his brothers, does not _want_ to rise, even without the Soldier's admonition. To do so would be to bring back all his aches.

But—the whimpers and cries are those of a child. He breathes in and out, shallow in his mangled chest.

 _Someone else will hear_ , he reminds himself.

 _Coward_. Is that Celegorm or Maglor, Caranthir or Curufin, Amras or—

 Maedhros levers himself up on the itching straw, his pulse ratcheting higher. No one stirs; not the women who sleep across the stall, nor the smaller bodies that are nearer his, though still making as much distance as they can between.

They are all afraid of Maedhros, here. Afraid, or disgusted by him, or both. He was presented to them with a monster’s face, and they have not forgotten it.

If they only saw the rest of him.

He shudders, and stands. The night guards usually do not keep too near the slave-quarters—not that he has had too much reason to be concerned. He has not tried to be so openly insubordinate. Has not ventured out at night.

There is a first time for all things.

Maedhros steps out into the thin night air.

 

It is an hour for ghosts. Look to the left, towards the crouching guardhouse, and see shades of nameless city-folk, dance-hall girls, leather-faced farmers all along the mountain ridge of _west_. Look to the right, where horses and thralls sleep uneasily, and see enemies and friends alike. Mairon’s white teeth, grinning like a knife turned on its side. Amras, clinging with his hands on his elbows, shivering.

Maedhros blinks hard. Hunches, as if a few inches of lost height will keep him safe from watchful eyes.

He can hear nothing, now. Was he imagining it? Has he risked all for nothing?

No—there it is again. He pauses, and realizes.

It comes from the direction of the pit.

 

This is what Maedhros finds when he draws near to the fresh-turned gape of the root-cellar: Sticks, flat on her belly, with her arms outstretched over the darkling edge. Beneath, just a moon-limned shadow, is the child whose name Maedhros does not yet know, the one he saw only at the corners of this world.

“Come, Frog,” Sticks keens, desperate, and then she sees or hears Maedhros, and rolls on her back like a frightened dog.

He raises his hands, wishing he could plead with them to make no sound. “ _Shh_ ,” he whispers. “I won’t hurt you.”

Sticks recovers herself, scrambling to her feet. “G’way,” she hisses. “G’way.”

Frog—if that is the only name he has—gives a little shriek and Maedhros grinds his teeth.

“Please,” he says. “Keep quiet. You must keep quiet.”

The overseers save no gentleness for Sticks. Frog is even smaller, younger. From what Maedhros can tell, his presence goes mostly unnoticed. Maedhros does not want to imagine, though, what would befall the lad if he were the reason that the men were roused from their beds. They would not rescue him kindly, or at all, before morning.

Maedhros must—

“You’re bad,” Sticks says forcefully, though she keeps her voice low. “You’re bad, an’ I won’t let you at him!”

How did he once win children’s trust?

He _didn’t_ , he supposes. He never needed to—they flocked to him willingly, without fear. Everything Maedhros ever cherished came to him easily. Everything he _ought_ to have earned was hard-won or out of reach entirely.

“I can get him out,” Maedhros says, keeping a respectful distance from her. However these two came to be here—and that they have no one else to help them, no one else that they might creep inside and call to—it is all too mysterious to investigate.

It is, moreover, not Maedhros’s place to do so.

“You can?” Sticks asks incredulously.

Frog has, if the line of his silhouette tells true, wrapped thin arms around thin knees. He rocks back and forth. Curufin used to do that, when he was distressed. Four? Five? How old was Curufin—and does it matter?

“I can,” Maedhros whispers. “But we must be quiet and quick about it. Sticks, if I climb down with him and lift him to you, are you strong enough to help him up?”

He has not yet been able to determine how old she is, but the instruction is a simple enough one for a child of eight or ten. She nods.

“I can.”

“I need you to be sure.”

“I’ve lifted him afore. He’s only five.”

Maedhros’s ruined heart twists in his ruined chest.

“Very well, then,” he says. “Thank you.”

The world around is silent, still. Sometimes silence means death and sometimes it means gloating, watchful eyes. Maedhros kneels backwards at the rough earthen edge of the cellar.

His broken ribs are healed, but his flesh has grown in all wrong. One flogging ruined his back. Half-a-dozen blows from a hot iron caused more destruction than hours of carefully savage brands.

He inches slowly over the ground, over the edge, hangs from weak arms, and drops.

Frog scuttles away from him, but Maedhros cannot appease him yet. He is too occupied with his own distress. He screws his lips shut to keep back the cries that such a jolting fall would wring from him, and he tries very hard to think of something, anything, that will take him from this.

 _Chin up_ , Celegorm chides, his eyes belying his sympathy. _It wasn’t a long fall._

(Even so.)

Hands and knees, first and always. Maedhros manages to stand. The cellar is deeper than his full height. When he was—before he was—he would have thought nothing of leaping up and pulling himself out of it. Rather more of a trick, with no helping hand to guide him, but not to be worried over.

Now—

He must not concern himself _with_ himself, now. He turns to Frog, who is clawing at the farthest corner as if he can dig himself away from the threat of a new monster, and softly, Maedhros says again,

“I won’t hurt you.”

“Frog! He won’t,” Sticks hisses, from up above.

Maedhros feels the near-forgotten sensation of a smile curling his lips. He waits, not moving, as Frog curls away from his frantic digging and turns towards Maedhros. His little face is pinched.

“I must lift you up,” Maedhros says slowly, still whispering. “Sticks will catch you.”

Sticks agrees. “I will.”

There is a long eternity. The boy won’t come to him, because Maedhros is giant and wild, a creature of darkness. Sticks has fallen silent, and when Maedhros glances back, he sees that she is on the verge of tears.

He has not seen her cry before. Here, in this hell-world, he has not seen the child cry.

 

In Formenos, he learned to hide tears and curry favor with laughter. That was meant to be a place of safety, an abiding home. Yet even there, he could not escape destiny. He did not know at all that destiny was only measured by his father’s life, not his own. All the _other_ tears he dried (his brothers’), all the other joys he thrust aside as displays of craven childhood, were only in service of a man who lies as he lived: divided, head from body, holiness from hand.

 

Frog—

—darts forward and wraps his arms around Maedhros’s knees.

 

“There now,” Maedhros says. He is breathing hard. Lifting the tiny tangle of limbs was almost too much for him.

(He used to be able to carry Celegorm, nearly full-grown. Used to be able to take a twin under each arm. Used to…)

Frog and Sticks squat above him, their grimy paws on their knees.

“How will you come up?” Sticks asks hoarsely, at last.

“Good?” whispers Frog, startling both Sticks and Maedhros. His little voice is a reed of a thing, fluttering.

Maedhros thinks:

 _How was I? Was I good, Maitimo?_ And oh, how it strikes him, how it takes him utterly to pieces, standing and shaking there below the level of the ground.  

( _You were very good._ )

From not so far away, there are voices.

“Sticks,” Maedhros says, between breaths rasped up the tortured back of his throat, “You must hide.”

Sticks is a child of cruelty and does not have to be told twice. She tugs Frog by the hand—Frog who fights a little, as if he does not understand the urgency—

Then they are gone. Maedhros sinks down, out of fear ( _I have made something of you_ , Morgoth says, quite proudly), but does not shut his eyes. He has to see how doom comes to him. He must _see_.

Grandmother Miriel, long-dead, had foresight. So Athair said. So Grandfather Finwe said. What is foresight, if not a curse?

The boots tramp and the voices drift closer, closer, closer. It always ends thus: discovered, laid bare. This time, a torch gleams down from above, the flaking sparks almost catching in his hair.

 

“If it’d been any other man, I’d have had ‘em leave him there. But see, here’s the trouble. I can’t let them at you. Worse’n that, I can’t let you rot. I have to keep you—” and Gothmog’s hand, hot and hard, seizes him by the scarred scruff like a barn-kitten, forcing him down and off his feet.

Maedhros kneeling, face tilted up, remembers these tobacco-stained teeth.

“I have to keep you alive.”

 

(Goodley cracked him hard across the shoulders with his cane, after they had dragged him up. Then another of the men said, _Don’t, not this one_.

 _A lucky one, ain’t he_ , said Goodley, flat and calm as he always was. Maedhros didn’t want that beating. Didn’t want any beating.

Knew that one was coming.)

 

Gothmog made him lie down with his arms above his head. Didn’t have to force him. Merely cuffed his ear and said, _down on your belly_. Maedhros did as he was told. _Hands forward_ , and Maedhros stretched them out.

The floorboard is rough beneath Maedhros’s cheek. There is a pine knot whorled there.

Gothmog settles the toe of one boot on Maedhros’s fingers. Presses enough that it hurts. Maedhros bites down on his tongue. He’s fair ready to piss himself; it wouldn’t be the first time. One loses track of dignity under fire and pain.

The worst is always the waiting.

“Alive, but not well.” Gothmog’s boot grinds down just a little harder—the pain clambers up. Nothing broken, Maedhros’s mind offers frantically. Nothing broken— _yet_. “I could horse-whip you here till you’re blubbering out o’ your head. I _should_.”

He isn’t wrong. Twisted round and round by the logic of deathless, dragged-on evil, Maedhros knows he deserves to be whipped. To be questioned, before and after. What was he doing, in the middle of the night, out of his quarters? Down in the new cellar?

Gothmog eases off Meadhros’s fingers. “Get up,” he says.

Maedhros, closer to blubbering than he wants to be, does so. It is difficult. Unconsciously, he cradles the sore hand in the other.

Gothmog’s small eyes observe this, and he smiles.

“You’ll test me, won’t you?”

Silence, here, would be obstinacy. That, at least, has not changed since Morgoth.

 

( _Take him to the master_ , said one of the men, and Maedhros knew he’d been—in some way— _free_ , before he chose to save a little life.)

 

“It won’t happen again, sir.”

He means _get caught_.

“Not good enough,” Gothmog says. “Crikey, you make my boot itch. Down on the floor again.”

Maedhros obeys. Gothmog isn’t Morgoth; there may be no deeper meaning to the frenetic shift in orders. Gothmog is—roiled, vexed. _He wants to kill you, but he can’t._

A bullet in Athair’s chest. So sudden, so unwise. But practical.

Damned practical.

_Don’t give him a reason._

Chastened, Maedhros wishes he knew how to ask for a whipping. Whatever he does, he cannot lose his life. He has to want anything else, any torture—but not death.

 _Please_. Is it a prayer? Is it penance? No—he asks for nothing but time, and that is the one thing God has never given back to anyone.

Gothmog taps his boot against the floor, perilously near to Maedhros’s temple.

“My lads think you’re a tarnished trinket,” he says. “My slaves think you’re a spy. Not so many friends, you have, as to be out at night, poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. What say ye?”

It is risky to lie. It is risky to be silent.

“Ah, but they don’t know what I know,” Gothmog says. “You’re both and neither. You’re a fighter, Feanorian. Mairon couldn’t carve it out of you. Bauglir couldn’t break you of it by shaking up your brains.”

Maedhros breathes shallowly.

“I’ll fucking break you,” Gothmog drawls. Flatter and colder and calmer than Goodley or any of the others, even as he talks around the wad shoved in his lower lip. “But I won’t break you of fighting.” His boot connects with Maedhros’s scarred shoulder, prodding him to roll over. “Keep getting up, boy. You can go.”


	13. drove a dark wedge between

Sweat, crawling the nape of his neck like a skimming finger, is too much the same as blood. Maedhros will die here if he is not careful. Circling a man twice his weight and strength, he does not know exactly _how_ to be careful.

He can only hope that his body remembers.

 

(So much happens before this.)

 

“Russandol,” says Sticks, and he does not realize that she is speaking to him, at first. When was the last time he was given a name not his own, that he did not hate, that he did not desire to spit out with as much force as if it were venom?

“What?”

“ _Russandol_.”

Still, he is not sure what it means. “Russ—Russa—”

“It’s you.” Sticks blinks her white lashes at him and goes back to picking rocks. He is torn, as he often is, these days: does he tell her to keep away from him, put at least a dozen paces between them, so that neither slave nor guard will think they speak friendly? Or does he allow himself the comfort of friendship?

 _Father Clement_ , his mind supplies. An old man made of nothing but spilling blood and crushed bone and words that Maedhros did not heed.

He flinches.

“Sticks, we mustn’t talk.”

“Why?”

“It’s dangerous.”

“You’re not.”

(He tries not to think of his cousins, for despair lies there, something unrevivable lies there— _died in the kindest arms I know_ —

But this might be Artanis at six or seven or however old Sticks is now, obstinate and delicate and steel-strong. Even then, his better. Every one of his cousins, his brothers, _better_.)

“You won’t hurt us, Russandol.” Sticks smiles, scrunching her sunburned nose. “Don’t be afraid.”

 

 _Red angel_.

“You there!”

_Now, do not waste your strength in the attack. Wear your opponent out. Heavy men have more to move, and less to think with._

_Feanor._

_It is true, Nerdanel. Maedhros, do not listen to your mother. Watch me, listen to me—not just my voice. Listen to the air moving around me. Ready yourself—_

(He is staring at the sky.)

“You there, bring your pretty face to my fist.”

(Why is it now, after weeks of keeping her away, that he thinks—even in passing—of his mother?)

 

Sticks, grumbling, obliges. She is braver by day than by night, it seems. Braver when the overseers are keeping a close watch on the men and not on the brats. Maedhros is still with the brats, though for this week past he is stronger. His arms do not shake so much. Callouses are building on his palms. His bones still fit together wrong, and the brands are still tender, sore, frightening, but he thinks he can stand on his own two feet again without the risk of falling.

_What a great accomplishment, son of Feanor._

He sighs, mops his brow. Sticks is watching him. Frog is hiding—he almost always does, by day—but it is too natural, with two little ones running about, to slip back into patterns of watchfulness. Kindness.

He must not let this happen, for their own safety.

_No friendship. Not here._

Maedhros’s pulse darts like a frightened rabbit. He restores himself to the present as he carries a stone the size of his head across the yard, offers it for a place in the low barricade that Gothmog has ordered built by the mouth of the road. The road that leads to Angband.

Does Gothmog seek to protect himself from the mountain?

That cannot be so. Gothmog is afraid of nothing. Not even Morgoth. Gothmog shot Athair in the chest, split all life in two, and Morgoth did not even punish him for it, so far as Maedhros knows…

_Because he gave him you._

_You are not my prisoner…you are my prize._

A prize, already half-torn to ribbons. What sense is there in it? What sense in any of it? Maedhros spends a good deal of every day in the minds of men he does not desire to know better. It is not desire that guides him.

It has never—

No. Desire _has_ guided him, he must admit it. He can no longer afford to lie to himself. Even so, not _here_. There is no desire here that will be of use but destruction.

Maedhros, weighed down by stones and spent chances, creates rather than destroys.

For the present.

_I will be such a prize as you have never had before. The rocket bursting in your hands, taking your hands with me._

 

“Russandol,” Sticks asks, at night. She is sitting near his head, cross-legged, braiding straw in her lap. The others are sleeping. Maedhros told her to go away, but she didn’t.

“Mm?”

“Are you very old?”

The soft rustle in the shadows tells him that Frog is also near.

“No,” Maedhros answers. “Not very old.”

 

Goodley, cane rolling in his hands, does not smile. “You’re to come with us.”

Maedhros sits up so quickly that his head swims. For a dreadful moment, he thinks that no time at all has passed since Sticks was questioning him in her hushed little voice, since Frog was rooting about in the corner.

But no one is around him, and the color of night has changed.

He gets up. He is already in his trousers, his shirt. They have no other clothes, here. They are rarely permitted to bathe. Maedhros itches with vermin, and hates it. Thinks of Morgoth washing away the blood, fitting him in clean dark clothes, and hates that more.

Goodley and Larsen do not shackle his hands. He lags behind them a bit, thanks to the weight on his ankle, and he finds himself fascinated by the moth-glow of Larsen’s yellow head in the lantern light.

They might be leading him to his execution, but all he can think of is Celegorm.

It must be August now. No, not even August—perhaps September. Months don’t have much meaning here, only… Maedhros cannot believe that he will live to see the winter. Whatever he intends to do must be done before then.

Destruction will have its day, that is all he knows. He carries stone, mixes water and mud. Takes the occasional snap of a lash to shoulders or side or shanks. After he was found in the cellar, the next few days were full of brutal taunts and small, vengeful savageries.

Larsen trod on his bread at supper. Maedhros ate it.

Goodley made him kneel for inspection, made him punctuate the answer to each useless question with a kiss to his boot.

Maedhros obliged, conscious of the Soldier’s silent disdain and Lem’s ill-concealed grin.  

Maedhros pressed his lips to the filthy leather a third time, and thought, _I will tear your throat out and feed it through your bleeding teeth one day, mark me_.

He shudders that thought away now, seeing a devil-ghost of Celegorm. Violence was Athair’s riptide current, never Maedhros’s.

Maedhros never _wanted_ to kill, before he was taken.

 

_Softly now. Cautious and calm._

The voice could be Athair’s, or, given enough years, it could be Curufin.

Given enough years.

He expects to be taken to the guardhouse. Instead, the men veer left, with Goodley dropping back to catch him by the elbow, force him forward. Behind the guardhouse, there is the light of torches and lanterns, a score of thralls, as many guards, and Gothmog.

Maedhros half expects to be stripped and lashed for their entertainment, before he realizes that he has overestimated his own importance. The men are ringed in a circle, and the grunts and roars coming from within that flame-tented circle are familiar to any Irishman who ever brawled.  He has seen, often enough, how some of the men have crumpled noses, blue-black eyes. What is extraordinary, however, about these marks on a slave?

There is a sickening crunch, a muffled groan, and Maedhros is thrust far enough inward to see Lem standing, scarlet fists pumping over his head.

A cheer rises. From the thralls? From Gothmog’s men, certainly. Gothmog himself, smoking a foul pipe and sitting on a barrel, makes no sound. The curl of his wide lips must suffice as praise. Across the crowd, Maedhros catches sight of the Soldier.

 

“He frightens me,” Sticks says. “But Belle says he ain’t a bad sort.”

“Belle?” Maedhros asks. This is before he knows that _Belle_ is a title twisted by irony, bestowed on the woman with half a face.

But—Sticks trusts her.

 

The Soldier nods to Lem. Lem roars again, as the man on the ground whines, blood still trickling from his nose and mouth. Lem streaks his dripping fingers across his cheeks, assumes the grinning mask of a madman, and hisses.

Maedhros, and his heart, stand still.

Gothmog laughs at last, rough and boisterous, and slaps his thigh. “Very well, _Mairon_ ,” he says. “Very well. Choose your next quarry, why don’t you.”

 

_Men enslave other men out of fear, Maedhros. Fear that their own inadequacy will not bring them the power they pretend to deserve. To be afraid is the gravest of all sins._

Lem’s eyes glitter, staring down Maedhros. “Him,” he says. “Big Red."

 

Whenever _he_ is guilty of the gravest of all sins, he cannot think of Athair. Didn’t he learn that, when he opened his mouth for Mairon’s pincers, quavered in anticipation of Mairon’s lash, tried his best to _welcome_ Mairon’s searing irons?

He needs another voice, for fear, and he can’t have it. Needs another life, and might lose it.

Maedhros tries to think of his strengths. His breathing is unsteady, even with consistent exertion, because of the damage to his ribs (and maybe to his lungs). His arms have been twisted and strained so often, and are wracked with brands and scars, particularly at the shoulders and biceps. This makes it hard not to strike the first blow, but to strike the next one.

Legs, then. His legs did not bear the brunt of the whipping, and though they are hideously scarred by the flaying knife, though the brand on his thigh still twinges, he can kick and fight well with his legs.

All this flashes through Maedhros’s mind in the moment when he must find footing inside the dusty circle. The men who are holding the torches keep them aloft, but they occasionally exchange the shafts from one hand to another, and so there is an uneven cast to the light all around.

Lem cracks his knuckles. Someone—guard or thrall—drags the fallen fighter on the ground away.

Maedhros studied history, studied the classics. Read of ancient gladiators and panoplied warriors who vanquished opponents on the field and in the arena. _Death, death, death,_ rings in his ears, even before Lem turns to Gothmog, inclines his head with dog-respect, and says,

“To the death?”

 

_“You cannot die, for I will walk the rest of the way to the west coast and into the ocean, Maedhros—”_

_“Maedhros—”_

_“I hate all the lies—”_

“As you like it,” Gothmog says, swine-small, swine-sharp eyes shining. “To the death.”

 

_O God, come to my assistance, O Lord, make haste to help me._

(Maedhros does not pray. They are just words. Words, neither names nor prayers.)

There are no friendly faces in this crowd. The guards, like dogs, smell the blood of the wounded, and put their mouths to the raw edges, drinking deep. These are working men with no souls, no reason to live but to receive their dollars and mete out their petty vengeances.

The Soldier shifts from one foot to the other.

_Your feet. You were a dancer, once._

But the shackle—

“Begin,” Gothmog orders. Sweat is already coursing over Maedhros’s skin.

 

Lem fights rough and direct, charging as a bear might. There is no strict disadvantage to this approach, here, since the circle stays tightly closed and his prey cannot slip beyond it. Gothmog taps his foot in time. The guards chant and swear and bellow with laughter.

Maedhros, knocked almost head over heels, picks himself up again with a grimace and ache. Lem’s fist took him in the collarbone.

 _He means to wear me out, just as I ought to do to him. His way shall hurt more._ Evading Lem is not the clever tactic he hoped it would be.

 

Thought is a strange thing in the midst of battle. And this _is_ battle, more than any fencing match in the city halls of Manhattan, more than any barnyard scrap between brothers, cousins. This is battle, truly, more than the accursed day at Ulmo’s Bridge. There were torches there, too—and Maedhros, torch held high, had both gun and father, then.

Now he has only his hands, his feet.

(The shackle.)

_Think, as you shake yourself and cower, as you lunge and miss and—so close, just now—_

Gothmog’s slaves bear hurts. Belle’s face is carved like a crude puppet’s, and the Soldier’s left shoulder is often inflamed, so badly was it wrenched at one time or another.

Lem, burly and muscular in the chest and arms, has legs plagued by _poor circulation_ , prompts a voice that is very dear and very dangerous. As such, his legs are often swollen, sore.

“You there,” Lem growls, when Maedhros has wriggled out of a hold, not as gracefully as he might have wished to. “Bring your pretty face to my fist.”

Maedhros obliges. Turns, at the last moment, so that he takes the man’s blunt knuckles to the side of his jaw (a narrow miss for his ear) and falls.

Just before impact, he kicked his shackled leg outwards. Hooked it around Lem’s calf. Gave all he had to gravity.

 

_If we are never afraid, Athair, what are we?_

_Irish._

A beat. _(You never know if he is teasing, when you are young. Then he is gone, and you must manage, must assume that he was not.)_

_The important thing, Maedhros, is that you give no quarter to your foe._

_(You are not even old, but he is gone, dead, ruined._ You _are ruined.)_

Athair’s voice in his head again must mean that he isn’t afraid anymore. Be that yea or nay, Maedhros’s whole body is ringing with the shock and pain of Lem’s weight. The crowd rumbles, the world shakes and the torches dance. Lem is _angry_ , burdening Maedhros’s ribs and hips with heavy-hoofed hands and uncompromising bulk.

Lem kicks up dust as he rises, and Maedhros sputters and coughs in his wake. Still, he will not cast off his chance, his purpose. He stays low—on his knees

 

_Kneel_

_Am I to ask you again?_

Maedhros stays low, stays on his knees, throws the force of his shoulders and arms against Lem’s legs, tucks his head down as Lem’s fists rain on his skull, spits dust, spits maybe a little blood from a bitten lip—

Lem is on the ground again.

Maedhros rears up just enough that he can bring down kneecap on shin. The man howls, and later, perhaps, Maedhros will hate how he himself smiled at that sound, smiled at another’s pain—

But for now, he sees and feels only the many times that Lem has kicked him. Hears again Lem reminding him what he is, what Maedhros already knows (and must know forever) that he is.

“You filthy _fucker_ ,” Lem growls, pawing at his legs, face twisted under his brush-beard. The blood on his cheeks is mudded over with dirt; he isn’t Mairon any longer.

(Mairon took trophies from Maedhros’s body.

Lem won’t take his life.)

 

It isn’t easily over, for all that. Maedhros suffers a bruising hold to his throat, hard-raked nails stinging the underside of his jaw. Selfishly, mulishly, he tries to guard his face almost as much as he endeavors to stay alive.

Such is vanity. His vanity; grievous folly that it is.

Lem’s assault is far less bullish, this time. He knows Maedhros will go for his legs, and in attempting to protect them, Lem stumbles. Maedhros gathers his strength for a leap that will not look like a leap.

Strength and speed and _force_ , not a single voice in his head to guide him, he springs.

Lem falls beneath him and Maedhros wastes no time clinging almost as closely as he would in an embrace. Savagely, he clubs his ironclad foot down about Lem’s shins, striking as many points as he can reach. With his hands, he has a harder task—pinning the thick wrists beside the heaving chest and belly. He stretches over the man’s expanse as best he can. He does not think it will be enough, but Lem is in enough agony that the fight has gone out of him.

Maedhros waits.

“Finished,” says Gothmog. The sound of his voice reminds Maedhros of where he is, what he is doing. He had forgotten, for space and time and demons, that he was being watched by flesh-and-blood men.

Lem’s breath chokes in his throat, almost as if he weeps.

Uneasily, uncertainly, Maedhros crawls off him. Settles first in kneeling, then pushes himself up. The exhaustion is nigh unbearable. He rocks on his heels.

(His shirt is torn, a little. If Gothmog is looking—and he is—he will be able to see _E-A-N_ like black thread stitched over the flushed skin above Maedhros’s breast.  

Are the others looking?)

Gothmog does not chide Maedhros for standing. Does not order Lem to stand also. Gothmog takes his pipe out of his mouth, and commands, quite coolly,

“Do it.”

There is a beat of silence. Absolute silence, this time, a sick hush.

Maedhros says, stupid with weariness, “Do what…sir?”

Gothmog is rarely seen without his hat. Now, he tips it off his brow, as if it shades him too much from the false sunlight of the flames borne by the thralls.

“Kill him,” he says. “You beat him into the earth, son. It’s finished. Now, finish him.”

Lem groans and writhes. There is a man who stooped to kiss a boot, who was made boy and babe again, hour after dreadful hour, and Maedhros _could_ avenge him here.

Could do it, he is certain, with his hands.

 

Cut off from childhood, he stood beside the grave of a grandmother he’d never known. He remembers and does not remember the words his grandfather said, then. Closer in time and harder in grief, he remembers how the earth ran black and silty on the day that his grandfather was buried in the opposite plot.

From this, Maedhros learned:

Everyone dies.

A lesson taken well in hand and mind—Maedhros, after all, killed half his own family, and doomed the rest.

 

“No,” he says. His head throbs with the sounds of the crowd—a murmur, a roar, then that starved hush again.

Gothmog doesn’t sputter. Doesn’t _sound_ surprised, though his forehead wrinkles in affront. “You what?”

Maedhros swallows hard. “His terms were not my terms.”

 

Belle is watching him from her one eye. If Maedhros had to guess, there is an alliance between her and the Soldier. Though no women were present for the fight, Belle seems to know something about it. Maedhros forces himself not to pick at the scabbing under his chin where Lem scratched him.

 _Not my terms_ , and then Gothmog let him go. It cannot be a mercy, that Gothmog let them both go.

Gothmog, ever-practical, ever quick with the trigger.

They are far afield today; a dozen all told, with Belle and another woman joining the company of men. They are planting radishes and carrots, hardy winter vegetables. Maedhros is breathing through his nose, as he does when nervous, and is trying his best not to dwell on the voices that carried him through, or didn’t.

His is not a heart made to hold.

_To the death…_

“Sticks says you’re a help to her.”

Maedhros jolts, nearly drops the seed pinched between his fingers. Belle’s face is—it isn’t as much scar tissue as skin, in fact. Yes, there is the slash across her empty eye-socket, the curling tendril lines that once split her mouth as wide as her jaw. But on closer inspection, her remaining eye is dark, wide, deep. Her cheekbones are broad and symmetrical.

(Maedhros is making himself look.)

“I…” He owes her an answer. The men hate him and would see him dead. Before he beat their champion, they wanted him dead in the mocking fashion of the downtrodden. Now, they want him taken to pieces, and they want it with real poisoned purpose. He humiliated Lem by sparing him as much as he did by beating him.

Maedhros understands enough of this world to understand that.

(He’d do it again. Spare him.)

“She doesn’t seem afraid when she talks about you,” Belle says. It is somewhat difficult to understand her, and her mouth ripples unpleasantly when she speaks. “I would know.”

At the end of another row of radishes, he decides this might be the beginning of a truce. He cannot act further, however. Belle has moved off, working now closer to the Soldier, and _there_ Maedhros dares not follow.

 

When Maedhros was eight or nine, Athair had a passing interest in the habits of worms. He placed two plates of glass together and filled the space between with soil. The worms slithered their way in, and left cunning tunnels like a map of rivers throughout.

Seeing another layer of Gothmog’s kingdom revealed takes Maedhros back to the worms’ inching, itching processes. Beneath the frowsy blanket of sod, Athair told him, was a complex and working system. Beneath the day-in, day-out drudgery of fortress-building and field-planting, there is a beating heart of hierarchy.

 _What will you do with this knowledge?_ Athair asks in his mind, as Maedhros stoops, clawing at his dirty knees, heaving in breaths against freshly bruised ribs.

(Athair likely asked the same about the worms.)

The knowledge is dauntingly immaterial, from one angle of looking. Gothmog, an overseer turned reluctant landlord and construction manager, must find his entertainment somewhere: what else is there to know? Maedhros must find his angle.

_I won’t break you of fighting._

He licks his chapped lips.

 

“Tell me a story.” Sticks hisses.

Maedhros passes a hand over his eyes. For just the flash of a moment, he felt that fond, elder-brother annoyance that naturally accompanied the ceaseless interruptions of sleep and study, too long ago to weep over now.

“Sticks, it is very late.”

“And so everyone is asleep, an’ ain’t no one to hear us talking here.”

She has a point.

Damn it, the little ones always have a point.

“Tell _us_ a story,” she coaxes, more persuasively still. Frog’s dark head rises from behind the pile of cooling-rags. Maedhros can see him blinking slowly, even in the dark.

But this is what Morgoth gouged out and crushed, as surely as Mairon left the sigils of his hatred on Maedhros’s once-smooth skin. Morgoth took every soft memory, every sweet impulse. Maedhros’s whole weary, wretched body longs to curve away from the taunting trust of these children, to cocoon himself in duty until there is nothing left.

 

When would his mother, yes, his _mother_ , have ceased to know him? When Mairon cut off his hair or when Mairon cut off his skin?

 _You know very well that it was long before that_ , Morgoth suggests, his phantom voice overtaking Sticks’ present one.

 

( _You think you did not choose, when Mairon whipped you. You think you did not choose, when little Amrod died. You think you did not choose, when we scarred your body. But you did choose, Maitimo. You chose_ him _, your father, above anyone, and you did it at the bridge, when you left your mother behind._ )

(He still tries, in his grasped-after strength, in what he calls healing, to hear _Athair’s_ voice, and no one else’s.)

 

“I am sorry, Sticks,” he whispers dully. “You must ask the women, tomorrow. Someone who can be…kind to you.”

 

There has only been one true flogging since Maedhros’s arrival to the camp.  A woman—one of Gothmog’s favorites, rumor had it, though such rumors were not for Maedhros’s ears—tried to run away, and was brought back.

Gothmog was a slaver of the deep south. Surely, then, he knows much of capturing runaway slaves. But it was not Gothmog who retrieved her, nor was it he who whipped her afterwards. The ant-march of labor choked and slowed a little as she was bound to one of the two posts entrenched in the dusty round.

Maedhros, nails biting his palms, thought of Rumil first, then of himself.

“Git on!” shouted the guards. The ant-march began again. Thus, work did not cease with the woman’s screams. Keeping to rock-picking, Maedhros concealed as best he could that was shaking and sick before it was over.

 _Coward, coward, thousand times a coward_.

(But what does bravery look like?)

Now that he thinks back on it, it was Belle who rushed up first when the woman was cut down, breaking  from the anonymity of ranks, from the mandate of her task. The overseers—Goodley had administered the beating—did not prevent her from doing so.

Maedhros does not know the name of the woman who lay moaning, bleeding. He only knows that she survived.

_And so did you. Both of you, scarred because you made a bid for freedom._

“Up,” orders Larsen, prodding Maedhros’s ribs. “Time for another round, Big Red.”

 

Lem, still looking worse for wear, is crouched with his comrades in the shadows. Some of the men shout rudely when Maedhros arrives. He wonders if it will always be so, if each night of “rounds” begins with tussling and betting before he comes. Then at last, when the blood-lust rises, he is presented like the crown roast at Christmas dinner.

_What will you do with this knowledge?_

Maedhros has not yet learned to live among the worms. He has made enemies, not allies.

(Is that why Morgoth left him his face?)

 

Goodley pushes him to stand in the middle of the circle and Gothmog, in his usual posture, takes his time about filling his pipe.

“They call you Big Red,” Gothmog muses. “But you’re a bony feller, ain’t you? If I made you give over that shirt, we could count yer ribs.” He waits, then chuckles. “Never you mind, for now. Big Red you be.”

 

 _“Not Russan_ dol. _”_ Sticks shakes her head. _“The russe is for red, and the andel is for angel. It is a secret name. Andel is—my ma used to—”_ Her face shutters and goes pale.

It is not safe. But Maedhros reaches swiftly out to pat her shoulder, and hopes that no one else sees. _“Never you mind, Sticks. Call me whatever you wish.” Angel_ stings, but he shan’t say so.

 _“Russandol.”_ Sticks grins again, and skitters away. It is thus decided.

 

Maedhros presses his lips together. He hasn’t broken the habit of chewing them—he never will, in the limited days he has remaining—but he also must not indulge it now. All the faces here are blank and hard, even those of the younger slaves.

(The dark-skinned one is named Silas, and the sapling-thin boy with Frog’s stiff black hair is Haldar. This he knows; this, and that they hate him.)

“We’ve something of a regular match,” Gothmog divulges, almost conversationally. “Right friendly, ‘cept when Lem proposes a kill.”

Not even a grumble from Lem’s corner. Maedhros owns, to himself, that he is surprised Lem was left alive.

_But no, you are not worth it. Gothmog will not exact vengeance for you. A man like Lem is worth ten times your troublesome hide._

_Gothmog_ will _kill you, given the chance._

“Now, this leaves me with a question. What do I do with you? Do I keep you out of our show? D’we bring you back for bets only? I confess I warn’t sure what end I’d fall on. But the men here, they called for ye. Seem to want to see you get licked. Can’t say I blame 'em.” His voice drops a little. “Would they believe me if I told him that you were once heart-breaker as well as a head-buster?”

Maedhros does not answer. If this calls for punishment, so be it.

“Hey there, Soldier.” Gothmog flicks a stained finger. “Get in the ring. Fight for your man. We all know how you and Lem are close as brothers.”

The throng parts for him.

The Soldier, when he follows Gothmog’s command and stands directly before Maedhros, is white with fury.

Maedhros guesses that it is fury, at least. Fury is a haunted, hungry thing.

 

The days are hot, for autumn. ( _Are you Russandol, now?_ ) It feels like summer still, even as the land turns golden-brown, even as the nights are scented with the beginning of a season’s change. ( _What would it mean, to have another name?_ ) Here, at night, Maedhros’s skin is grimy and clammy at once. He is not a prize after all—he is _prey_. Worlds away, the foppish dandy with the maudlin heart. Worlds away, the swift-grinned liar. Worlds away, the puppet-shadow of Finwe’s famed benevolence.

( _Russandol. It does not really mean anything._ )

Afraid and alone, he looks into the Soldier’s rage and wonders only what the man has lost.

 

“Big Red doesn’t want to die,” Gothmog says. He is—talkative, tonight. Enjoying himself, Maedhros thinks, though it is hard to tell the man’s mood. He is generally taciturn; perhaps the stein balanced on his knee has loosened his tongue a little. Perhaps he was enjoying himself the night he shot—

Maedhros grinds his teeth. No time to be distracted.

“Doesn’t want to die,” Gothmog repeats. “So what rules have we? What prizes?”

If it is to the Soldier that he poses this question, the Soldier does not oblige with a reply. Gothmog taps the blunted toe of his boot against the ground. “How do ye for this: five lashes for the redhead, my lad, if you win.”

The Soldier jerks his chin up. Does not look at Gothmog; looks at Maedhros. “Accepted.”

_Five lashes. You can bear five lashes. Indeed, it is almost too small a thing._

_Ah,_ mocks Morgoth, who knows Gothmog and Maedhros too well, always. _A mercy?_

His pulse climbs and climbs. His back stings already.

_—has never been afraid; he does not understand. He thinks you are stronger than you are; I know you cannot help your weakness._

The Soldier, no matter what he does, no matter how may lashes he takes as his vengeance (for Lem, for the brats, for the very existence of the leper before him) is not Mairon. Lem was not Mairon.

Why does it always come back to Mairon, when Maedhros fights?

_Because that is the fight you did not win._

He looks at the Soldier, and he looks at his own clenched fists, once only and no more.  

(He has not decided, yet, whether this is a fight he must win or lose.)

 

The Soldier—and it was a mistake, for Maedhros not to learn his name as well his weaknesses, since a name and a history tell much of a man—does not fight like Lem. He is steady, cautious, measured. Yet, the fury burns no less brightly for this.

This is almost like boxing. They circle each other, the Soldier’s fist darts out, and Maedhros ducks.

(Maedhros was trained in boxing, but only for show. Athair thought it pitiful, that men did not learn how to _really_ fight. _Save dancing for dancing_ , Athair said.)

The Soldier’s right shoulder gives him a good deal of pain. Maedhros knows this because he has seen him clutch it, grimacing, after a long day’s labor. Indeed, it is one of the only intimations of feeling that the man has not denied himself. Maedhros trains his attention on it, but the Soldier is ready for him—he must have known that that would be Maedhros’s target, after seeing the business with Lem and his legs. He guards it from Maedhros’s assaults without losing ground.

 

Maedhros’s memory (that which was not made a burnt offering for Morgoth’s pleasing) is a strange, patchworked thing. As diligently as he can, he has clipped out the names and faces too pure to be carried here. His brothers remain because they _need_ him, and because he owes them a recent debt. Maedhros the thrall is still Maedhros enough to owe them a debt, for the careless words he gave away.

 _No,_ he said once, to a face and name he is _still_ fighting to keep at bay, _Athair never strikes us._

And to the deceiver: _He never beat us. It was not his way._

 _Five lashes_ , Athair suggests, stern, _is not all that hangs in the balance here._

 

Gothmog does not speak again as the dust flies, as the fighters clash in another painful meeting of bruised knuckles. Instead, he is placidly silent, letting the watching men make noise twice over for him. The guards shout as they would at a match between dogs, but the thralls are really eager, almost giddy, at the prospect of their favorite besting the newcomer.

 _The whore_ , Maedhros thinks, half-mad, because the word is never far away, and encompasses desperation as much as it does one ugly thread of his ugly past.

(What would he give, to return to _that_ despair? Only one wound, and yes, a dozen shames, but shames that could be smoothed away by Maglor’s hand on his brow, Maglor’s arms helping him up. Athair, angry and grieving—and _loving_ , in his way.)

Maedhros falls, and the Soldier follows him down, elbow so hard to thigh ( _femur, a crucial bone, Maitimo_ ) that Maedhros gasps out, anguished air rather than real sound. His leg still shrieking, he twists round across the smooth ground, clawing at the Soldier’s shoulder. He digs it deep it with his left hand. The man grunts, tries to throw him off. Maedhros is favoring a leg, as the Soldier is an arm, and they tumble over and over in a disjointed heap of limbs, new aches accumulating with each turn.

(He never fought his brothers like this, because they were his _brothers_. Now Athair’s chiding is tenfold more reasonable— _Maedhros, they will never learn to defend themselves if you do not test them_ truly _._ )

(He’d tested them at marksmanship. Taught Celegorm to shoot. Taught Caranthir a dozen tricks with a slingshot. Athair was right; it wasn’t enough. Wasn’t enough for _Maedhros_.)

Maedhros’s thigh is twinging— _like a fucker_ , if he has to be Irish, let him swear with them, _seven fucking hells_ —but his legs are still his strength, his best chance. When he has a moment on the upside, he flings himself back, like a barnyard tabby startled off its feet. _His_ feet are not permitted to fail him. He kicks up towards the man’s face— _past_ his face—and crooks his right knee almost at once. His left leg, with its weighted ankle, he holds straight. This puts him upside down and half on his back, elbows already shaking with the effort of supporting his body, but the lock around the Soldier’s throat is a good one, a firm one.

 

_And if you win, what then?_

_It is not an accident that Gothmog put you in the ring together. It cannot be. This man is a leader, and he must know that._

_They always know._

 

The Soldier is struggling for all his worth. Maedhros cannot hold him forever, and so he doesn’t. He lets loose his knee, just enough, and the Soldier breaks free. Seizes Maedhros’s shoulders in his hands. Slams him against the ground.

Again. Again.

It hurts. Head and neck and jaw and—oh, God above, don’t the torches look like stars tonight? Don’t the stars look like pinned-up snow?

(In all of pain, there comes a moment, where reality is lost, and it is rather beautiful, despite the awful truth it is.)

(Maybe death is like _the rest of that_.)

 

Maedhros doesn’t stand up. The Soldier does not crater his face with blows. _Ah, mercy, mamaí, they still have it sometimes, only when there is no_ they _to them_ —

 

(Russandol is as much a name as the one carved on his chest.)

 

It is Gothmog who drags Maedhros upright, and it is Gothmog who presses something cool and heavy into his hand. The cursing of the crowd starts up, wild and reckless, and only recedes when the overseers snarl and stalk close to the ranks of slaves.

Why such

_Anger?_

Maedhros comes back to himself, back to the pain in his head and his leg and his ribs and the shoulder that still _burns_ , of nights, and glances down to see Gothmog’s whip-handle wrapped in his palm, staring silver up at him.

The Soldier is bent at an awkward angle, Gothmog’s hand twisted in his collar, forcing his head to bow.

“Five lashes for the redhead,” Gothmog ruminates, tilting his head to spit just past the end of the Soldier’s nose. “Have at him, redhead. Take your lashes.”

 

_Fear that their own inadequacy will not bring them the power they pretend to deserve._

_Oh, Jesus Christ, Athair, what does any of that matter?_

 

The whip thuds at Maedhros’s feet. His fingers rejected it, and the length of it ripples like a lazy rattler, stretching itself in warm sand.

“Now, you don’t want to do that, son.” Gothmog’s voice cuts the air, a lash above a lash. “Pick it up.” He doesn’t move more than his lips as he adds, “ _You’re in no place to make terms_.”

He said that to Athair, two minutes before, give or take.

(Take.)

Maedhros leans down. Hefts the dread thing in his right hand.

 _Fuck you, bastard, thrice-cursed_ —

That from the crowd, likely Lem. And Maedhros does not deny it. He cannot bank on these men knowing what he knows, even though he imagines they must:

This is Gothmog, ready for a kill.

Without warning, Gothmog sends the Soldier sprawling with a quick release and a hard smack to the side of the head. The Soldier rises up on his hands, then flattens himself out. His whole form is stiff.

Maedhros wants nothing more than to empty bread and water from his belly to his feet. It hurts more than almost anything else has: to see the waiting, living corpse of a man trying to ready himself for suffering.

“Five lashes,” Gothmog says.

Maedhros nearly swallows his tongue.

Morgoth would laugh to see this. To see the beaten dog raised to the hideous height of man.

_I lost. I lost, I thought it would—_

_Save anyone?_

“I’ll make it ten if you don’t get a move on.”

Maedhros snaps his hand back—

 

 (Some worms, split in half, do not even die. That is how little life is in them.)

 

He drops the writhing thing beside him, wishes his hand could follow it. Wishes he could turn back time, before dull red streaked the Soldier’s grey work-shirt in two places. Only two; three of the lashes did not bite deep enough.

(This is the trick of Gothmog’s lash, which Maedhros has only felt himself through a layer of cloth: it is finely barbed.)

Gothmog thumps his hands together slowly. Does not laugh. Does not look away from Maedhros, though Maedhros is not sure, afterwards, how he even knows this, since he is blinking and shivering like man caught in his own rainstorm.

“Get up, Gwindor,” Gothmog says.

The Soldier—Gwindor—gets up.

“Clear ‘em out, boys.”

The overseers herd the thralls away into darkness. Back to their beds, where blood may mingle with phlegm and dust and sweat, confounding breathing; where aches may tatter any hope of sleep, as they seek hopeless rest.

(One flash of a moment—Lem trying to lunge forward, Gwindor’s arm, thrown up like a shield, shoving him back.)

 

Maedhros stands alone in the shadows with his father’s killer.

He bites down on his own cowardice (his tongue). As a coward he does not, in this moment, see a way to slaying the man. He must only prevent himself from asking _why_. Why the injustice and trickery.

(Did Gothmog know—

—know that if Maedhros held the vice of his legs a little longer, Gwindor would have fainted?)

Gothmog coils the whip in his two hands, like passing rope through.

“Now neither of us have satisfaction,” he says, from under the brim of his hat. “You’ve gone and made yourself the most hated man this side of Mairon, and I ain’t had the pleasure of seeing you flayed as you deserve.”

(When Maedhros swallows this time, it is in an attempt to force his heart back down to where it belongs.)

“Do you think they hate me?”

Maedhros blinks.

“I said, do you think they hate me?”

An answer. He must give an answer. “I—suppose so, sir.”

“They don’t.” Gothmog hooks the whip at his belt. “First, they’re too scared to. Second, I’m just too ordinary. You mind that, boy? You stick your nose out as far as yours is—you’ll have wolves on your back. Mairon’s the same. Just ‘cause he became one don’t change it. Any man among ‘em would murder that Frenchie maggot as quick as breathing, if they ain’t think he’d come back to life and skin their faces off.”

Maedhros does not move a muscle. Gothmog takes a step closer.

“You don’t make people afraid like that.” Chucks him under the chin. “Oh, you slavering bitch. What would you do for me? You make like you did with Bauglir, beg me for scraps of kindness? You want a gentle touch?”

If Maedhros clenches his teeth any harder—

“No,” Gothmog says. “That’s all a lie, a front. _You_ want to kill me. You’re the only one as thinks you can.” This time, his hand holds firm. He wraps it, beefsteak thick, around the column of Maedhros’s throat, holds fast. Pinches him in the hollow of ear and jaw so hard that Maedhros sees stars, but not the snow-pinned kind, so hard that his knees go to jelly.

Gothmog breathes tobacco against his cheek.

“I will test your mettle,” he whispers, low and hot. “But oh, I would think afore you test mine again.”

He lets Maedhros fall (is this not the way of things?) and calls for Goodley.

Goodley, his cane beating a tattoo at Maedhros’s weary ankles, leads him back to the musty straw.


	14. a captain that men would follow

Maedhros cannot walk.

He had not felt _this_ , before. This is a searing, treacherous pain fanning from its arrowhead point. His legs gave out at other times, of course, after they had been shackled in place for too long, when his head was too light, when his skin and the flesh beneath was taken in places. The brand atop one of his feet made placing weight on that foot difficult for weeks, also, but Father Cl—

Here and now, though, it is pain at the bone. In his first panic, he was untrue: he _has_ felt the terror of a break, long ago, and that is how he knows its onset. Simply put, he has not known it _here_ , in the barracks or in the Mountain.

(Athair could not bring himself to set the splintered arm—)

Maedhros leans against the nearest square-cut wall stud. Practices the deep breaths that must now struggle through a twisted body before they find release. It is as anyone might have predicted, as even Morgoth, all false concern, surely would have warned. Two fights in a row was too much for Maedhros, too much for Russandol.

(This second name is rougher, less like a charm and more like an insult, though it was not given as such.)

(Not everything is given as such.)

 _Again, Russandol_ , he commands himself, under his breath. Once he was lauded for a silver tongue. He could be a lawyer, Grandfather Finwe said. Could take the courts of justice by storm, fair and bold and deadly in the best sense. Yet, in the end, the idea was not taken up by—by Athair.

In the west, Maedhros died and Maedhros learned. Now Maedhros knows silver is not the tongue, but rather, the bit angled beneath it.

He _can_ walk, only not very well. To put too much weight on his leg is agony—yes, this is the same leg that Gwindor struck hard with his arm, and that which Maedhros used to nearly choke him.

He has paid for his efforts.

 _How much longer—_ but he wasn’t thinking, was he? Not when the swift wrench of his hand sent the lash flicking lazy and perfectly precise, as if he was _made_ to step into the yawning shadows of Gothmog’s wake. He refused to be Morgoth, to be Mairon, but how different is he from these bold and sneering men, some scarce older than youths, who follow a leader doggedly to whatever end?

(Maedhros murdered men for his father, men who ought to have been friends.)

His breath turns shuddery, and he passes one hand, damp with night-sweat, over his forehead and lips. Two or three hours of dead sleep is not enough. He takes a step, and then another, aching with weariness and other bruises. Exhaustion _is_ a purple-flowering wound just as plum-ripe flesh is. All the self-hatred in the world will only equal that empty brain-throb in power; such sins cannot _exceed_ the deprivation of bodily needs, in physical effect.

(Maedhros stumbles.)

The women and children are rising around him, paying him no heed, scuttling into line. This is usual. But for Sticks—and the occasional glance or word from Belle—he is an eerie, misplaced ghost to them.

_Better that way._

He makes it to the line, stands stooped.

Goodley is inspecting them—which is to say, standing, arms folded around his cane, making sure that no one is ill… or worse, rebellious.

Maedhros disguises his limp with all he has in him. Goodley would cull him if he could. Gothmog would cull him if he could.

 _What must I do?_ he asks, to the silence of his mind, and the answer that comes is not one of strategy but—

_Even a sprain, if not properly bound and favored—_

Maedhros squeezes his eyes shut. Grinds his teeth. One step, then another. He passes Goodley; passes the test; passes the voice that crept, for a moment, into his head.

_But what shall you do when you are out in the fields?_

(For today, they are moving out, out past the barracks, a single long line past the new cellar, and what is their task today, Maedhros’s leg cannot bear it—)

The weight slams him from his left side. His right leg is the one in pain, and his right leg strikes the ground first, buckling under him in savage betrayal.

The war-cry from his assailant—

 

_“Ai! Ai! Maitimo! We shall destroy you, one and all!” cry the Ambarussa, but it is Curufin who dives for his legs, who wraps his bony little arms around Maedhros’s booted ankles, and later, when asked, Curufin shall say, under the freckles on his bone-white nose—_

_“You are very tall, and that is how a tree is best felled.”_

_Curufin, a boy._

A boy. _Haldar_. Maedhros recognizes him before the light of day fits itself all back together properly. He struck his head when he fell.

Yet, when a body fails and falters, as his does, still it scrabbles and grasps within and without, for the thoughtless memories of its cunning reflexes. Maedhros knows the fighter to be Haldar (the young one, the _boy_ ) and his hands slam forward to throw this boy aside.

_—shall destroy you—_

 Haldar tumbles with a winded huff, and Maedhros leans back, not wanting to hurt him. Let this be an accident, some quarrel ready-solved… but no, the boy leaps again, and his dark face is blushing darker. Rage and fear and humiliation, webbed together.

“Betrayer!” cries Haldar. “Lowest betrayer!”

He hurls himself at Maedhros’s ribs, fists hard against his hollow stomach. The pain blooms, and Maedhros fights back. Kicks, feels his bad leg go all wrong.

He has to _survive_ , but he won’t—he isn’t supposed to hurt a _child_ —

“Enough!” he cries, managing to free himself once more, and Haldar is bleeding from the nose as Curufin and Caranthir never did from any of those long-ago playful spats, spats in which Maedhros was secretly cautious and painstaking.

“Enough,” Maedhros says again, more softly, as if the line of thralls has not halted, has not broken, is not ringed around them in a horde of gaping mouths. There are only women and children here, still; Haldar usually boards and labors with the men. Today, he has broken ranks.

Broken ranks, and for what?

Gothmog does not collar his slaves, as Maedhros once feared he would. As time turns, however, Gothmog’s power is made clear and common: he keeps his thralls close, their necks wrung in his crushing hand.

Gothmog can make them _hate_.

But it was not Gothmog, who made this boy love. Haldar fights, Maedhros believes, _for love of his leader._ In a stark and vivid image, Maedhros sees life as it could have run foul: _Athair_ , prone and quivering, taking the stripes of a slave.

His mind recoils from such an idea. Yes, Maedhros would be dead before he let such a thing happen to Athair.

(Maedhros should be dead, but he doesn’t want to be.)

“I am sorry,” Maedhros says, speaking quickly. His ears are ringing. “You are angry, and right to be angry. Haldar, is it? Haldar. Visit your vengeance on me another time, but not here, where—”

But the boy, regaining his strength, has launched another assault, howling through the thick wetness of his bloody nose and lips. This is justice, and it will not wait for Maedhros’s pleas. Maedhros ducks one ill-thrown punch, takes the next close enough to the bruise Lem left between his neck and shoulder that a hiss of pain escapes him.

The boy could be a better fighter, were he not giddy with outrage. Could be, but never _will_ be, if he keeps this up—

(Justice does not—)

“Haldar, _stop_ ,” Maedhros begs, flat on his back. He cannot even shield his near-virgin face with his hands, cannot protect that last vanity, for he has let the boy pin his arms beside him. “Haldar—”

“Do not call me by my name!”

 _You will die here._ The words, if he can speak them, will be calm with cold certainty. _Run, while you still can._

Too late. Boots beat the ground around them, and here is Larsen, his hair burning almost white in the brutal morning sun. He topples Haldar with one a swift kick aimed at the boy’s throat. The throat— _God, why so cruel?_

“What in hell?” Larsen demands, as Haldar coughs and groans. Maedhros forces himself up on his elbows. His leg simmers with warning. To move it feels perilous. Strange how an injury in a single body can carry all the threat of an avalanche, stones poised just next to each other, flesh and bone the same.

To move, then, is out of the question.

To speak—

 _You’ve gone and made yourself the most hated man this side of Mairon_.

Larsen looks at him, breathing hard, flushed visibly even beneath his perennial sunburn. Maedhros is not reminded of Celegorm today. Cannot see his fierce golden brother as he gazes at this broad, stupid face. The question is out of itself, now, and Maedhros must move. His hands grasp dust. He heaves upright.

“Goodley,” calls Larsen. “Give over your cane. I’ll teach these two a lesson.”

No one is going to work, trucking their ant-chain to the mocking near-freedom of the planting fields. The women stand frozen. Maedhros is too distracted (too distressed) to look for familiar faces.

Are they familiar? Does he even know most of their names?

(He has no allies— _most hated_ —he cannot call for aid, and even if he could, it would not be just to, because they are slaves.)

So: no one so much as breathes.

 

This is Larsen, raising Goodley’s cane—this is Goodley, smirking in the hazy periphery—this is the cane crashing down over Haldar’s thin sprawling body—

Maedhros is a fool, and hides nothing. He opened body and soul for less than another’s safety, didn’t he? Gave away everything to the destroyer, the death’s head gentleman. In that folly, he thought himself servile at last, and then he fought back anyway. Thus, in the face of high-flung stakes, is it any surprise that old habits, as well as old lives, die hard?

He surges forward with his last strength, wrapping his arms around Larsen’s ankles to fell him like a tree.

 

_Maitimo, what are you most afraid of?_

_What am_ I _afraid of? Nothing._

_Athair is afraid of nothing, but I don’t know if you are the same. You aren’t Athair._

These are Curufin-questions, but they come from Amrod, eight and owlish, his round cheeks propped up in his hands.

_I am afraid of spiders. Will you promise to tell no one?_

_You asked for the promise after you told me._

_Very clever of you._

_Because you are clever, I suppose I must answer you more entirely, mustn’t I? Well, I am afraid of being too late. If I drop something, I reach to catch it a second after it has already spun past my fingers. Even that makes me rather sick._

Amrod sucks his teeth. _Alright. I am most afraid of toads._

_Toads?_

_Curufin says they carry poison in the lumps on their backs._

“You rat!” cries Larsen, and as Maedhros hoped—or _tried_ to hope, underscored by that weakness that will only leave him in death, the cane falls on his shoulders, now. His back and sides. He lifts his arms to cover his head, his leg curling pitifully and spear-sharp beneath him. He gasps but does not groan.

Is the boy running? Is he slipping to hiding, as he ought?

More boots. More blows. Maedhros stifles a cry, now. Bruises on bruises. He wrenches away, despite himself, despite his resolve—

_Stop!_

It is a word, spoken. _Shouted_. But Maedhros cannot hear it as a thing apart from the thunder in his ears, any more than the boots are really different from the blows. Who is calling him? Who is saving him?

The blows cease.

 _Larsen, man, lay off._ Those clipped syllables are Goodley’s. Maedhros comes back to himself.

 _He’s a rat, a filthy fucking rat_ —Larsen is a Swede, doesn’t say _fucking_ with the right flourish, _no, Maitimo, you’re drifting, even if your name isn’t Maitimo now…_

The cane strikes his leg. Maedhros hacks out something…sob, groan, blood stirred up by enough blows to the inadequate bones that house his vitals.

Not another anatomy lesson, spinning out of the dark.

 

Another

blow

and then

 

A gunshot is the only sound that Maedhros will always, always know.

 

Larsen’s blood spurts for just a moment, before death slows it to a trickle. (Death, slow.) He falls, too stiff to stagger, with the hole in his forehead surprisingly neat, and then the dust takes both him and his blood.

So with Athair, so with Jem, so with all the men whom Maedhros killed.

Maedhros only remembers to grieve, a little, when he remembers that Larsen was young.

_Hypocrite. You would have killed him if you could. Yours were innocent; he was not even that._

Gothmog tucks his smoking pistol back into its holster, dusts off his hands. Strides forward, in boots that hit the ground more heavily than the others. “That’s all we’ll have o’that,” he says. His voice is low again— _ordinary_ —but in the ghastly silence it carries like wind.

Maedhros is still on the ground. In this unfortunate posture, he finds himself once again looking up, always looking up, at the man who stole father and brother from him. The man who clubbed him into utter helplessness, who mocked and whipped him. The man who has made his words and his work into lies.

Maedhros is almost more afraid of him than of Morgoth.

Gothmog’s eyes don’t leave him as he speaks again. “What happened here?”

_Larsen is dead. He shot Larsen to save you._

_No. Do not be a fool—_ more _of a fool. He shot Larsen because Larsen disobeyed him._

The smell of blood is butcher-shop fresh. The day will be a hot one—a proper scorcher, even for September, if September it is. Gunsmoke hangs in the air, then drifts away.

Maedhros is lost to the world he keeps attempting to master, lost as all hope is lost.

“I’ve bullets left for this gun,” Gothmog says, drawl drawn out. “So. One of ye, answer.”

Haldar draws himself up, straight-spined and proud. Maedhros’s pulse ratchets in his throat.

 _No, no, Curufin Amrod Celegorm_ Fingon _don’t—_

“This man,” Haldar begins, and Maedhros sets his left foot on the ground, his left foot and his left hand, pushes up with his right hand, totters, rises, _stands._

“He insulted me, sir,” Maedhros says, above the din of his heart and his bruises. “He called me a traitor, and—and a cur, and I attacked him.”

_Fool, you are trying to stay alive._

Gothmog smiles, and keeps smiling. “That so? That what happened?” He turns back to Haldar, and Maedhros grinds his nails against his palms, sways sickly against the pain that drifts round him in a cloud, and says,

“You told me, sir, that they would hate me. And they do, and I cannot bear it. I broke order, and for that I—”

_Your father died for less than this._

Maedhros shuts his mouth with a clockwork click.

(Too late.)

“Goodley?” Gothmog asks, prowling closer to Haldar, who does—not—move—away—

“Yessir?”

“What happened here?”

(The crowd is full of new faces. The men. The men and the overseers who herd them have returned. Where is Gwindor, or Lem, anyone who hates Maedhros but loves this boy?

 _Where are they?_ )

“Little stripling there,” Goodley says, a man of few words called to account, “Leapt on Red out of nowhere. Pounded him into the ground, he did, till…”

Larsen is all crooked angles in the red-clotted dirt. Maybe Goodley doesn’t want to say his name.

Maedhros meets Haldar’s eyes. Jerks his chin. Knows it means nothing. Wishes the boy knew how to run long before they ever crossed their paths through hell.

“I see,” Gothmog says. To Haldar, he almost purrs, “Well, son? What did you do?”

Haldar squares his skinny shoulders. “I fought him because I thought he had done wrong.”

“When did he do wrong?”

Maedhros hasn’t prayed here, or maybe he has. Maybe this is praying.

“L-last night. Sir.”

“Ah. On my orders.” Gothmog is still smiling. “Now, did Red fight back?”

“A little.” The crust of blood beneath Haldar’s nose, coating his chin, must answer that. “But he did not want to.”

_Fair. Fair of heart and fair of mind and_

Justice.

“Didn’t want to?”

Haldar looks at Maedhros. Really looks, clear of eye and furrowed of brow, as if he is trying to _understand_ something just beyond his reach. Just beyond the earthly frame this fiendish place has imposed upon him.

Gothmog tilts his head as if he follows that gaze. Turns his chin a little. Reaches up, with one meathook hand, to clap the boy on the shoulder.

“I see,” Gothmog says again. “I see.” He snaps the boy’s neck with a single twist of his hand, and drops the body like a sack of meal.

 

Is it Maedhros alone who cries out in anguish, in horror?

He never remembers, exactly.

 

Gothmog steps over Haldar, steps over Larsen, unconcerned by their surprised dead faces, their crooked dead bodies. Gothmog seizes Maedhros by both shoulders.

“I told you not to test me again, boy,” he says. He lets go, and Maedhros’s weight falls on his leg—the leg that hurt him while Haldar was fighting and cursing and _living_. Maedhros falls too; this is the way of things.

Gothmog stands before him, inexorable. He calls to Goodley and to Harris, who has come back with the men.

“Take this one and tie him ‘twixt the poles.” He pauses, his right fist working like a knot drawn tight. “And strip him. I’m off to finish my breakfast.”

 

The mistake he keeps making is to think that he has nothing to lose. This nearly got him killed, some time ago, while his brothers still needed what aid _he_ could still give them.  

Nothing to lose, with his body a ruin—but the rough slave-garb remains a covering. _Protection_. (He thinks, for the first time in many weeks or many ages, of his lost coat.)

Nothing to lose, but his pulse throbs hardest at each pain-point, since he can well suspect what Gothmog will do to him after binding him to the posts.

After his breakfast!

There is Gothmog, if you like—a man who is very certain of what he has to lose and gain by exacting the simple machinery of an ordinary kingdom. Gothmog did not desert his old life to pan for gold. Gothmog waited for Bauglir’s order, and the order was, _do as you have done before_. _Oversee._

Maedhros should have predicted this.

_But what would you have done differently? How much cowardice could you have borne, in service of a dream not even dreamt?_

He bites his tongue to forget the question. What is about to happen to him will ring no bell of courage. Goodley and Harris have him by the arms. Their hands are hard. They march him away from the barracks edge, where the scuffle took place (where two lives ended), and towards the center of the compound.

 

The two posts are not merely whipping posts. They are most often used to hold horses for shoeing, since the stables were built rather too cramped for blacksmithing work. Maedhros did think (briefly and critically) on the matter, because of Athair, but otherwise he shied away from the scarred poles, disliking to think of what it would be like to be lashed against one.

Goodley and Harris thrust him to the ground. Maedhros realizes that the crowd is following them. But of course; they were given no orders as to where they should go. Danger may attend them, yes, but so does curiosity.

The strongest of all human inclinations.

_Curiosity…_

As a hard hand—it does not matter whose—tears at his shirt, he can think only of what they all will _see_.

 

_I cannot, no, I cannot bear this, please, please. Not this—_

His own voice answers coldly, and more harshly than any other he could summon to speak with greater authority. _If you do not bear it, he will kill you. You forgot that, today, to save the boy. The boy is dead, and you have no choice left but to survive._

He hates the voice, hates himself, for being right and wrong and desperate. So, this is how he discovers how much of the dissipated fop remains! He cries and kicks in the raw prison of his mind, disliking—disliking!—how all his shameful marks shall be observed!

 _Does it pain you more than the disfiguration itself?_ asks the cold voice.

_It is not that. It is that I…_

He shivers, though the sun is already bleeding orange. Goodley was not gentle; nor was Harris, but Goodley is a brute and a vengeful one. Whether he liked Larsen or not—can such a man have likes?—it was the application of his cane that stirred Larsen to heedless fury. As such, Maedhros’s grey shirt and trousers lie in tatters on the ground. He crouches, head down, not moving, until they hoist him up again. The posts loom like a gate into nothing. They are close enough together that—

 

Maedhros’s shoulders shudder and strain. The friction of the cords on his far-flung wrists is already hateful; his leg, at an awkward, half-lowered angle is a thousand times worse. Battered as he already is, he did not struggle.

(He would not have struggled anyway.)

He cannot call for aid. He knows that; knew it before poor Haldar met his end. Haldar, who cannot be— _could not have been_ —more than Curufin’s age.

 _They will hate you_ , _even before they see their every suspicion confirmed on your body._

They think him chosen, and used, and they are not entirely wrong.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Harris breathes, stepping back.

Goodley says nothing.

Maedhros lifts his head a little, towards the men and the sun, then drops it again.

He waits like that for an hour.

 

The overseers, having consulted, determine that no work shall be done without Gothmog’s order. And when Gothmog returns, he does not shoot _them_ for it, but surveys the assembled, gawping throng as if he expected it to be there.

Of all of this, Maedhros is aware only very dimly. Sweat runs down his scarred neck and his scarred and waiting back. His skin feels tender and too-warm. He is parched already, and his head aches. Thus, all in all, he is far more conscious of the pain than of his captors’ movements. The pain is like this: the snapping, harp-string tension in his tendons; the tender, shuddering bruises. The memory climbing up each rib: what it is like, to be unable to breathe properly, when one has been kicked.

The sun, in its coal-bright arc, illuminates a sick, light world around him. Even if no one is whispering the words scrawled over him, even if no one is grimacing in revulsion at what a hot iron can do to white Irish skin, Maedhros can hear and see them with demon fervor.

Gothmog, once arrived, does not taunt him. He strides past Maedhros’s taut, heaving frame. Plants himself firmly. Cracks his whip once, to fling the full ribbon of its length, and then begins his work.

 

_Do you remember when we trained together? To endure pain?_

Athair looks rather like a boy himself, when he sits like this, cross-legged on the stoop, with his chin resting on one hand. Maedhros is standing, awkward and tall and eleven, and while it feels like disrespect to lean over Athair like this, it would also feel quite wrong to sit without being invited.

He does not know why he makes such persnickety distinctions, but that is the power of Athair. Maedhros wants, so badly, for Athair to _feel_ powerful, and pleased.

_I do remember that, Athair._

_It was so unpleasant,_ Athair says fondly. _The needles, and that cursed wasp—but I have not winced over trifles, since! There is real utility to it._

_Yes, sir._

_We were the only ones to understand that, you and I. That is why I never tried with Maglor, you know. He is so delicate, even now. Even though he is almost ten._ And Athair looks at his eldest, imperious although he looks _up_ , and says, _Do you take my meaning, Maedhros?_

_I think I do, sir._

Maedhros is back in the forge. That is, Mairon’s voice is in his ears, creeping, but Mairon is nowhere to be seen—at first. Gradually two eyes—one eye—emerge like near stars or nearer monsters, swimming in the foreground of all the boiling world.

Maedhros is damned, and so his soul is being roasted as his flesh watches.

Perhaps he has that the wrong way round, but he is in no mood for a puzzle.

Somewhere, a great distance away, a voice says,

 _Anyone who goes near him befoe I give the word will be strung up in pieces_.

Maedhros was whipped, but dizzily, he kept no count at all. He thinks that the whipping itself must be over, a matter of practicality and not mercy. There is building to do; someone is eager to begin the building of the forge. Bricks are laid upon bricks; all smoking and wheezing. They are the wall and he is churned up into the mortar for the wall—a thing of dust or paste, he knows not which.

This is all very foolish, when considered for more than a moment. He is man, not mortar. The whipping is done, he did not count the lashes, the world is on fire.

His body, which he can half-see from afar (and also not at all) continues to lurch in the rhythm of stunted flight. _Away, away_ , screams skin and blood and bone, but the thing that is being beaten is never permitted to escape.

Tenderly, a vat of blood is poured over his head. _Thank you, sir, but I do not need that_ , and that sort of civil plea, does no good—is, in fact, disregarded. Have they taken the blood from his back in great gobbets, and ladled it up for this purpose?

 

You

Are

Going

Mad

 

_None of this is real, none of it, oh, Maitimo, it isn’t real._

The forge again, and _him_. Maedhros shakes his head. If shaking his head is real, that sets the whole world tilting like a ship. A ship has no place in the forge.

(The world is very bright, for the forge.)

 _Not you, I’m afraid_ , Maedhros says lightly, or tries to, but _I’m afraid_ is all that makes its way to the surface.

 

The forge obliges him, after a while. The forge grows dark.

 

( _God, I shan’t scream_ , he vowed, when he still could think. Gothmog’s whip was barbed; it was worse than Mairon’s was, even. He knew he was bleeding at once, under these lashes; Mairon had had to beat him enough to split open the rising welts. _I shan’t scream, for he doesn’t like weakness. He knows what I have done, and so do I, and I must bear this. I must—_

There was a pacing to Gothmog’s hand, had Maedhros chosen to count with it. Gothmog thrashed methodically, without either mercy or rage. Perhaps Gothmog was not like Morgoth or Mairon, and took no pleasure in this, a punishment less than death. The trembling body before him, and its fate, were measured for him as by the hands of a clock.

Maedhros wrenched beneath another blow; dangled, gasping, in the pause, and then the next sent him flying again, clipped wings (curled fingers) thumping against the posts.

After a few more, he could no longer be certain whether he broke his vow or not.)

 

_All of this is rather biblical, save the forge. I don’t like the forge. I wish it wouldn’t surround me. Why do they keep raising it higher?_

_You sound like a child,_ says the voice behind the hands. It is more than a voice—it is shoulders, too, and a shadowed face.

 

He does not notice the grey-dove hush that surrounds him until it fades away. In its place, something deeper.

 _Poor, poor child._ _That_ voice, he knows. Knows and draws back from it, from the touch both hot and cold, like lantern glass.

The heat is gone. How can the heat be gone?

_Maitimo, I often wonder where I shall find you next._

The heat is gone because the forge is finished. Black as night, it closes overhead. Whether it was made by bricks or time or memory, everything past is past. Maedhros has sat in silence, cross-legged, knowing that to lift even a finger would choke him in anguish from top to toe.

The blackness moves.

 _Do you know,_ he says aloud, and quite politely, for a man who was about to ask the next question— _if I am dead? That would be the utter failure of all my plans, and I have earned the failure, I know, but…_

_Yes._

_Yes, I have earned it, or yes, I am dead?_

_You are not dead._

Maedhros swallows this. Swallowing is impossible, though, and so the practice must be abandoned.

 

_Will you come back to me? Will you not come back to me, my arrogant one?_

 

Maedhros has nothing to do but wait. Waiting brings its own rewards, which are not the same as gifts, and Maedhros’s reward is to see the figure turn at last.

 _Will you come back to me? Arrogant one arrogant one_ traitor _five lashes for the redhead_ my lad _if you win?_

These voices are not the proper voice. Maedhros moves his hands, finally, to cover his mouth. He does this because the face behind the hands, the face above the proud shoulders—

—is his own, vain and beautiful.


	15. the days have gone down

_How glad I am, Maitimo, that there are still those who will be kind to you._

_Mother_ , he answers, carefully.  _I thought you were gone._

_I was. I am here, now, until your fever passes._

_Oh._  He lifts a hand to rest against his own cheek, and is surprised to find that his hand belongs to him.  _I—_

(She fades.)

 

Maedhros has not entered the men’s quarters before. They are much larger than the half-barracks that serve the women and children, since the men are nearly thrice the number of the two combined. He thinks of all of this, after two realizations: that he is  _here_ , where he ought not to be, and that his head aches.

His whole body aches, or will upon further discovery, and so he stays still. No one is striking him, at the moment. The day is beginning in grey-smoked dawn, and the men are moving like ghosts.

Maedhros has not died; he knows better than to expect that, now. Still, he fears he may be naked—fears that they may be able to see all his savage sins.

_You know that they already did._

He does not move. The dead do not move, and neither do creatures that hide well enough to keep living.

 _Did_ you _hide?_  Morgoth’s voice is close, close in his mind today. When did he last hear it? His head throbs. He decides that he cannot feel his body, yet. That must be the shock.  _Did you hide, or did you run out, wild and begging for your own blood?_

Time passes. Not an hour, but perhaps half of one. No one calls him by the names carved on his skin. He does not turn his gaze, and the shadows of men move in his periphery: moving out. They are going to the line. He can hear the bell ringing.

Larsen is dead.

Young Haldar—

(He did not save Haldar.)

(He very nearly did not save himself.)

Maedhros shuts his eyes briefly, the better to attend to cursing himself.

“Russandol.”

He opens his eyes again. A face appears overhead, as of a person sitting beside him and leaning across his prone body.

The Soldier. Gwindor.

Maedhros makes a number of mistakes: the first is attempting to raise himself. The second is forgetting what he has or has not eaten.  Hot bile fills his mouth at the sharply dizzying rise of pain. Every inch of his skin is afire. He vomits, and chokes, and sobs, and knows that he gives himself away.

For if the Soldier is here, the other men are too, all two score and more. He only imagined their ghosts departing. They are  _here_ , and they shall see Gothmog’s whipping boy for the lowly child he is.

Then they shall finish him. Maedhros cannot fight.

“Easy now, dammit. Easy.”

Maedhros is sitting half-upright, an arm framing his shoulders, which hurt, and another arm caught in the bruising grip of his own hands.

The arms are Gwindor’s. Maedhros releases his hold. He stares straight ahead. It feels both danger and disrespect, to look Gwindor in the face.

“You’re a fool,” Gwindor says, not unkindly.

Maedhros worries his tongue against his closed teeth. His tongue is thick and raw and tastes of salt. If he speaks, will Gwindor understand him?

“Right.” Gwindor half-turns, keeping the arm behind Maedhros’s shoulders where it is, and fumbles for something. It is a cup of water.

Maedhros remembers a cell long ago. His weak body and weaker spirit recoil.

Gwindor frowns.

“It’s just water, lad.”

 _Lad_?

“If this...punishment is not enough for your vengeance,” Maedhros says, speaking with as much difficulty as he might have expected, “I beg a little more time…” He must use fewer words. “Heal. A few more days.”

 He is a coward. He is hoping for mercy from a man who hates him. Athair would laugh.

“What poppycock,” Gwindor mutters. “There’s no one else here. No appearances to keep up.” He coughs.

Maedhros does not understand. He used to be good at that; at understanding. He twists his fingers together. Though rough and ruddier than he remembers, burnt on the backs of his knuckles, they are a comfort.

He is all over bandages, again. White bands like burial wrappings cover him from neck to waist. A humming threat is building in the back of his mind, as to the meaning of this, but he is still too muzzy to set it right.

Gwindor eases him down, a moment that gives Maedhros no little fear of being smothered, and then Gwindor stands. Faces away. He is a fine figure of a man, as Grandfather Finwe used to say, but for the way one shoulder is sloped and bent wrong. The back of his shirt is still stained with the marks Maedhros gave him.

“I meant it,” Maedhros says, though he desperately, desperately does not want to mean it. He is so very afraid, of what pain he already knows. “I—wronged you.”

Gwindor swears under his breath. “Never mind that. You remember—anything?”

“Most of it.”

“You know you should drink, then. You’re fried like an egg.”

The man is incomprehensible. Maedhros thought he had grasped him utterly; his stoicism, his fierce eagle pride. This gruff awkwardness, rather like…like Athair, in apology, is wholly unexpected.

“Water,” Maedhros offers meekly. A truce. “Please.”

Gwindor wheels round again and stoops for the cup. They really are alone, in the low-roofed room. Maedhros is lying on a cot-bunk and a crate that have been pushed together to make something long enough to bear him.

He wonders when he came here; how many hours or days have passed. Is reminded, suddenly, of Father Clement, and is sickly silent.

Gwindor hands him the cup, and through a slow and tedious lifting of his right arm, Maedhros can drink. The water is their usual fare; rock-drained, swimming with mineral flecks and silt.

It is strangely soothing.

“Thought you’d died on me,” Gwindor observes, taking the cup from him before Maedhros even determines that the best course of action is to toy with it guiltily and wait for a command. “That would have been inconvenient.”

 _For more than one of us_. His thoughts are returning, with the irrepressible irreverence that will one day see him killed.

Gothmog tried to kill him— _ah,_ the pain is returning, too.

“I…” he swallows the rest of the water. He has questions, but he cannot ask most of them. Not without trust. “Did they order you to do this? To stay with me?”

Gwindor’s eyes shutter.  _Yes_.

Maedhros shifts a little where he sits. The day is warm, but he is warmer.  _Fever_ , commands his mind, but not in the voice that whispered to him in darkness. Maedhros does not trust, but he says, “How long?”

“A dozen hours. You’re practically drenched in salves.”

Someone touched him. Someone…his mind flails and revolts, as it always does, now. Now, when he wakes to find himself swaddled in the shedding skins of the care that follows cruelty.

_Gothmog wanted you dead…_

He does not remember most of it. He lied. Yes, he remembers the drifting horror of waiting, bared for prurient, hopeless eyes. He remembers the unbearable sting of the lash. Again, again, again—but then it fades to black and red and the sun’s eternal glow.

(He is still burning)

Maedhros is the flame and the match both, each gnawing the other into something that cannot be saved.

“Gwindor,” he says, very quietly— _try, try, you must not stop trying_ —“I know how you must hate me.”

“This is why you got walloped, you know,” Gwindor says, the corners of his mouth working. “You just—poke your head out of line, every time.”

There is a blanket thrown over Maedhros’s knees, and he crooks his fingers in it.

Gwindor’s eyes are pale blue. Maedhros saw them, cold and fierce, when they battled needlessly and ruthlessly. Now they are weary, but not as weak as Father Clement’s were. Gwindor never loses his sharpness, even when he looks like a man who has lost everything else.

“Russandol,” he says, Sticks’ name sounding strange on his lips, “The boy—”

 _Haldar_  was his name.  _Twitch_ , some called him, but Maedhros did not, because he did not really know him.

(How many times must he watch boys as young as his brothers—)

“I know,” Gwindor says, staring dead-straight—which, for him, is somehow the same as another man shying away from light and truth. “I know what you—tried to do.”

“Failed to do.” Even to his own ears, Maedhros’s voice is paper-thin.

“Took more than your share for,” Gwindor says, breaking his gaze at last. “There now. Enough out of you. Can you eat?”

Maedhros shakes his head. When no blow comes, he is surprised to find that he was not really expecting one.

Gwindor shrugs. “Nothing for me to do but to sit here and whittle.”

“You have a knife?”

“No. Blockhead.” That strange tug at the corners of his mouth again. Maedhros dares not believe that he is trying to  _smile_.

“Of course. I am…” He stops short of the  _sorry_ , as the word is as tired and used as he is himself. The sun must be rising, and it wraps its rays inescapably around him, even here. Maedhros shudders, which does less than no good.

“Nasty business,” Gwindor says. “Think you could sleep?”

Maedhros doesn’t, but if that is what Gwindor wishes, he will obey. Gwindor lowers him down by the hands, looking somewhere over Maedhros’s head.

Then Gwindor takes up his post again, on his battered stool, and Maedhros pretends that he shall not lie stiffly, miserably awake.

 

_He dreams, quite simply, of Celegorm. But not Celegorm as he is now, six-foot-odd and golden-brown. His Celegorm, rather, is a downy-haired babe. There, too, is Caranthir’s broom-shaft spike of untameable black, and Curufin creeping about on all fours, and the twins—_

_Maedhros turns round and round, trying to know what he is to do with all of them so small at once. Where is Maglor? Maglor is rather impatient, it is true, but he will be no end of help. He will mind Maedhros, so that Maedhros may mind the rest._

_“Maglor! For God’s sake,” Maedhros cries, before recalling shamefacedly that he ought not blaspheme in front of the little ones. “Maglor, I am sorry. But you must—you_ must _come.”_

Gwindor looks strange when Maedhros opens his eyes—his face and hair and grey slave’s jacket all blooming blue. There are distant sounds of life.

“The men are returning,” Gwindor says.

“No,” Maedhros gasps. “I—”

Gwindor stares at him for a long moment, in the half-light, and then he does smile. It is a pained, tooth-baring thing, but it does not frighten Maedhros like so many others. “You slept the day away, Russandol.”

“Did I?” ( _If this was Morgoth, beside him, he would be punished for such childish questions—only after he had been coaxed to them._ )

“Aye. Pity I hadn’t the day’s paper. What? You thought I didn’t know how to read?”

Maedhros has not considered this. Has not considered…reading, in some time. How foolish to think how he held the latest Dickens in his hands, before he—before they—

And he flinches, because he is weak.

“Never mind,” Gwindor says, standing. “Perhaps I caught a few winks as well. You keep quiet, alright? I’ll bring you some supper.”

Maedhros tries to be grateful for the supper, but his stomach roils since he knows that the men shall soon descend from their hurried meal in the mess-hall. Gwindor sits beside him, tearing at bread. There is more bread than usual, on Maedhros’s plate.

He picks at it, and Gwindor says,

“Belle saved some for you. Yesterday—well, I suppose it’s past yesterday, now.”

“I lost time.”

“You did. It’s the second full day, since that first ‘un.”

“Since Haldar,” Maedhros says, low, and without thinking.

He must learn not to speak without thinking. How much more flesh can be taken from him, before he  _learns_?

“Yes.” Gwindor puts down his plate, empty. “We buried him. Lem and I.”

Maedhros is, to some minds, still kneeling on the edge of a riverbank, while water and the world crash down. “It isn’t mine to ask.”

“It is.”

The door swings open, and the men pour in for the night. A dozen pairs of eager eyes, at least, turn to the odd pair in the corner. Maedhros turns his face away.

“Soldier.”

That’s Lem, looming large. Maedhros glances back up.

“What is it, Lem?”

“A word?”

Gwindor shakes his head, a tight motion. “I’ve got my orders, mate. I’m sorry.”

And then Lem is gone, and the bunks are shaking as they are climbed, and Gwindor stands from his stool. Reaches behind it, draws out a blanket.

Maedhros whispers, as low as he can, “Don’t mind me.”

“I must.”

Maedhros lies very still. The heat has not left, and will never leave him. His back aches, stings,  _screams_  if he turns from side to side. And, in all of this, he is a duty.

 

 Dreams again. Faces he hasn’t seen since the spring before last, Formenos. Even in sleep, he does his best to forget them.

_That’s because you left me._

“Russandol.” The voice is whispering, and muffled by more than quiet. Maedhros turns, gasps, and when the pain has receded enough to let him see again, he finds himself facing the dark hump of a shoulder. The owner of the shoulder says again, “Russandol,” and he answers, in a voice hoarse with the effort of keeping still and calm,

“Yes?”

“It’s Belle. I didn’t want to alarm you. May I turn?”

She knows. She has seen him, repulsed by the face that others left her. Is it her fault that she lost an eye?

 _Is it your fault, that_ —

“Yes,” he murmurs. “Of course.”

“Steady now,” Gwindor says, stepping into view—there is chimney hole not far away, with no chimney, and that lets moonlight flow.

Maedhros did not wonder, before, why his cot had been removed some paces from the other bunks. Now he understands. If they keep their voices low, the others may not wake.

Belle kneels opposite, her arms full of woven bundles.  _Bandages_ , Maedhros realizes. They have come here not to guard him, not to kill him (though he begins to suspect they do not mean to kill him at all). They have come to change his bandages.

“Russandol,” Belle says again, and hesitates. He cannot see her ruined lips very well, in the dark. “That is the name the children call you by. Do you allow it?”

“Allow it?” He swallows, dry. “Yes. I—yes.”

“Movement will hurt,” Belle whispers. “But we must turn you over to treat your back. I knotted the bandages at your side. Can you bear it?”

He nods. He would think it a trick, but it wasn’t a trick with Father Clement, not at first. Maedhros chews the inside of his cheek. The soft part there is already tattered and blistered. His whole mouth is sore, and will be for some time. It had barely healed from Mairon’s mask, and now—

He pays the price, for keeping silent—if he even did.

“Careful of his leg,” Gwindor mutters. “Bad, yet?”

“I—I think if I tried to walk on it, it would be.” He has lain very still, through all of this. He knows there are new bruises, dark beneath the red. Bruises that would have been pain enough, if Gothmog had not flayed him freshly.

“I’ll take your elbow.” And Gwindor puts one firm, strong hand around Maedhros’s arm, but not too tightly, and with the other, hovers. “I’ll slip this under your neck,” he says, almost with the same halting manner as Belle. “Will that do?”

They do not want to touch him. Who would? But Maedhros looks at Belle and cannot quite trust the strength of that logic.

He nods.

Gwindor’s calloused fingers scrape against Maedhros’s nape, setting the raw skin dancing and flickering nastily. That, however, is nothing to the molten leap of agony that climbs his spine and the flesh around it, when Gwindor lifts him.

Maedhros clenches every bone he can. It is not enough; a cry escapes him.

“Damn,” Gwindor says, sounding—penitent? “Damn it all.”

“Sorry,” Maedhros mumbles.

“Lift your head,” Belle urges. “Drink a little of this. It will numb you, I hope.”

 _It_  is whiskey, coarse and strong. Maedhros almost weeps over it. He would not wish to say  _why_.

With Gwindor’s help, his arms hang over the edges of the cot, fingers grazing floor, and Belle kneels down beside him to begin the tedious work of picking out the knots. Maedhros presses his face against the lumpy, straw-stuffed cushion that pillows his head and tries to count, to pass away the time. He finds himself more interested in his helpers, whether that is wise or not.

Belle’s fingers, when they brush his bare ribs, are cold. He tries not to think of women, generally, which is easier than he expected—Belle scarcely looks like one. Then he feels guilty for that thought.

She stops, hisses.

“It’s stuck.”

“Eh?” Gwindor leans over, trying to peer.

Of course Belle is perfect for this task; she is used to working with lesser sight. Even so, it must be hellishly difficult. Maedhros tries to remain motionless, so as not to encumber her.

“Where he tore—”

Maedhros’s mind is wrenched back. Oh, but the barb felt as if it cut him to the bone. Gothmog did not laugh, as Mairon might have, when flesh flew. It almost did not matter.

(There were books on sailing at Grandfather Finwe’s, and one had a chapter on floggings. He and Maglor were fascinated by it. Celegorm less so.  _Where are the cannons?_  demanded Celegorm. But Maedhros was drawn shamefully back, again and again, to how a man lived after he was beaten.

Some men died.)

 “I shall do it quickly,” Belle promises.

Quickly. Finished quickly. He always wants that—until it no longer serves the purpose he tries to follow, doggedly and without distraction. Tries, and fails. Then quickness, it seems, is given in strange rewards.

The pain is like a stab wound, the swift staunching with a fresh linen twice as bad. It is—invasive, to have a new wound touched. He knows this time and time over, but it does not change. He wants to writhe away, to strike weakly back with fist or foot, but he cannot do that to Belle.

Grimly, he forces his forehead down in aching pressure as she peels away the other bandages. It is an anguished affair; Maedhros’s hands are clenched.

 “There,” Belle breathes. She does not ask; she smooths his hair. He—bears it, without pain.

“Belle,” Gwindor warns, and she draws her hand back.

“I must keep the wounds clean,” she says, after a moment. “This will hurt very badly, Russandol. I am sorry. Gwindor, let him take your hands.”

Gwindor sputters. “What good will that do?”

Belle huffs softly. A very human sound. “It will help keep him quiet. If I give you something to bite down on, Russandol, it may not be clean—and I fear your mouth is very tender.”

It is.

“So, Gwindor. Your hands.”

Maedhros can hear Gwindor shift. In a moment, those same hands that lifted him are laced in his. Maedhros is glad that he does not have to look at the man; at anyone who is offering him kindness.

Belle works with speed and efficiency. Still, her ministrations send such violent spasms through him that he must beat his head against the straw-stuffing, and hold to Gwindor’s hands with all his might.

Gwindor does not so much as wince.

 

Maedhros wakes again at midday. His mouth feels stuffed with cotton. He speaks through it, in the empty quarters, to say, “Did you give me something?”

“All sensation in my fingers?” Gwindor is pacing the narrow passage between the bunks, and speaks over his shoulder. “No, Red. You slept on your own time.”

There is no comfort, or peace, exactly, but sleep can only do him…good. “Ought you not to be out working with the other men?” Maedhros asks weakly, when Gwindor has brought him a little water.

“I can’t.” A simple answer.

 _Tending me_ , he thinks, abject. “I’ll manage well enough on my own, today. I won’t make you useless.”

“My use—and yours—is decided by others than ourselves,” Gwindor points out. He refills the water; no rations, it seems. “I know what I’m about, as far as orders is concerned.”

Maedhros turns his head wearily away.

“None of that,” Gwindor says, in a somewhat gentler tone. “Lord, it’s a merciless place. I know that, and so do you. Take the rest, and the water, and my company, if you can bear it, won’t you?”

The barracks door swings open.

“I  _told_  you,” Sticks hisses triumphantly. “He’s awake now.”

She holds the door open, and Frog tiptoes in under her elbow, shoulders hunched. He seizes up at the sight of Gwindor, and Sticks grabs him by the sleeve.

“We’re here to see Russandol.”

Maedhros holds in all his breath. Tries not to see—faces past in their little faces present, for that would be unfair.

“You’ve no business coming here,” Gwindor tells them, glaring. “These are the men’s quarters, Sticks, and you know it.”

“I came here t’other night.”

“That was an emergency.” Gwindor doesn’t look at Maedhros.

Maedhros opens his mouth, shuts it again. Finds himself staring into Frog’s deep-welled eyes.

“You must listen to Gwindor—” He stops short. He almost called them,  _bairns_. He has to shut his eyes, now; has to curl his fingernails against the creases of his palms.

Gwindor clears his throat. “Five minutes.”

“An’ what’s that, with no pocketwatch,” Stick mutters rebelliously, but she drags Frog after her, not stopping until they are standing at the foot of Maedhros’s cot. “Hullo, Russandol,” she says. Despite her brass, she doesn’t quite look at him straight on.

Frog is chewing his fingers.

“Hullo,” Maedhros says softly.

“Does it hurt?” Sticks asks.

Frog takes his hand out of his mouth.

“Mostly itches,” Maedhros answers. “You’ve gotten sunburn, haven’t you?”

“Lots.”

“Lots, indeed. It won’t be so bad in a few days.”

She blinks rapidly. Child honesty in her, still, but she won’t ask again what he already didn’t answer. “Russandol…”

“Bread,” Frog announces, unexpectedly.

Maedhros glances down, to where the little hand is pointing—and yes, there is bread tucked just under Maedhros’s elbow, because he hid it there, after he swallowed the morning’s apple and dried pork. “You may have it,” he offers, glad to have something to speak of, “If you like.”

Frog shuffles forward, snatches it, and wriggles under the cot to eat it.

“Cheat,” Gwindor reproves him. “You told me you’d finished it.”

“It’s finished now,” Maedhros points out, feeling rather clever.

Gwindor sighs heavily. He stands with his arms folded, watching the children like hawks. After some deliberation, Sticks sits on the end of the cot. “Belle says you’re stubborn.”

“Did she?”

“Good stubborn. You hang on.”

The bread devoured, Frog’s head emerges from beneath the cot, followed by the rest of him. He sits with his poky little spine against the edge of the straw mattress, and claims one of Maedhros’s hands in his own, by tugging it down over his shoulder.

Maedhros lets him.

They sit like that, in silence.

At last—

“I’ll try to be good stubborn, then,” Maedhros says. “I’ve plenty of time to try, lying here.”

“Promise? Promise you’ll only be good stubborn?”

“It has been five minutes, Miss Sticks,” Gwindor says, in a forbidding tone. “You’ll be missed up on the flats, won’t you?”

“Mebbe so,” Sticks agrees airily. “Russandol, you must promise.”

“I’m not very good at promises,” Maedhros whispers.

“Oh.” Sticks sighs.

Frog is patting his hand with one small paw. Maedhros’s knuckles are torn and bruised, his wrist quite raw, but he doesn’t mind it.

“I’ll promise for you,” Sticks decides, after a moment. “Come, Frog. Hop along.”

“No,” says Frog. He is unusually talkative today.

Maedhros reaches down with his other hand—the left one—and strokes it through Frog’s flat dark hair. “You should listen to her,” he murmurs. “And then perhaps you can come again?” He realizes that he has proposed too much, with no authority. He turns his head to look at Gwindor, questioning.

“If they are quiet and ask Belle’s leave, they  _may_ ,” Gwindor concedes. “Now, get gone. I mean it.”

When they have slipped out, Maedhros finds himself quite tired. Still, he must ask,

“Did Sticks come? The night I—”

“Aye, she did. Was right worried about you.”

Maedhros cannot help the tears that well up, that leak from his eyes. He lifts one hand to shield his face; Gwindor does not force it away.

Gwindor, in fact, is very quiet. At last, he says, “Don’t carry it all, Red. It won’t do you a lick of good.”

 

Another uncertain meal, which he eats more for Gwindor’s sake than for his own. Another gauntlet of glances—and Lem does not even try to approach tonight. He merely sends a hard, venomous glance Maedhros’s way and stalks to his bunk at the far end of the barracks.

Maedhros sleeps uneasily, because he dreams.

 

_We go together. We will hunt, and track too, and ford many rivers. We’ll climb mountains—we’ll drag Macalaure with us, so that you both may sing songs to amuse me. Do you honestly think that I could stay alive, sharing a wagon with all that rabble, if I didn’t have you for company?_

 

In the morning, Gwindor watches him closely as he eats each morsel of the coarse cornbread, each bite of shriveled apple.

“It’s a long way to dying,” Maedhros says. “You could let me starve, a little.”

“The mouth on you,” Gwindor grouses, unrelenting.

He seems restless, to be trapped here as nursemaid. Maedhros is sick with shame over it, but he has tried hinting more than once, that Gwindor may go, and Gwindor pays him absolutely no heed.

When the sun is halfway up the sky, Belle comes.  

Her thick dark hair is curling damply under the scrap kerchief she wears tied around her head. Her crude-cut face is harsher, in the light of day.

“ _He’s_  off to the railroad,” she says. “I got leave of Harris, to get down.”

“Who’s on duty here?”

“Knox.”

Gwindor shrugs. “Alright. Well, look at him yourself. Our Russandol is behaving just as he ought. Ate all his breakfast and everything.”

One too-long side of Belle’s mouth twitches. Of course, Maedhros reminds himself, her slit cheeks closed long ago; it is only an illusion. “Do you not want to eat, still?”

Maedhros feels rather like a scolded child. He shrugs, then realizes he is mirroring Gwindor, and stares at his hands.

“It’s rather early to change the bandages,” Belle says, taking the stool that Gwindor offers her. Her fingers, linked together, are graceful still. Symmetrical. “How do you feel, Russandol? As honest as you can.”

In answer, he tries to sit up, and falls back, gasping.

“Jesus,” says Gwindor. “Even if you can’t change the bandages yet, Belle—might do to look at the wounds in good light.”

“I’ll just see to the one on your side,” Belle says. There is something very strange about the sight of one eye blinking. He wonders how it feels. He pities himself, of nights, knowing what Mairon did to him, but how much worse would it be, to be every inch a monster?

Belle twitches her face away. Maedhros forgot to answer, and he is embarrassed.

“I don’t mind,” he says hastily. He rolls obligingly onto his side, and nearly faints.

Gwindor and Belle both kneel by the cot, when Maedhros comes to. He is given some whiskey.

Belle examines the deepest of the lash-marks, and is satisfied. “The edges are not as angry and red as I might have feared. No sickness in the blood, I think.”

Gwindor breathes a sigh of relief. Then he coughs. “No insult meant, Russandol, but you smell worse than a sty.”

It is his hair. Blood, sweat, vomit. Sickness in every strand, not to mention the filth of as many days and weeks before, since he has not taken much advantage of the scant opportunities to bathe.

Not with—not with his scars.

They cleaned his wounds, of course, and he has washed his hands and his face, but it is at length agreed (between Belle and Gwindor—Maedhros has not much say in the matter) that Belle will wash his hair. This is how Maedhros finds himself, stiff with panic, his head at Belle’s knees. She has a sliver of lye soap in hand and a basin of cold water at the ready.

Her fingers work softly against his scalp. Maedhros’s mind goes white.

(She is too gentle. He hasn’t been touched like this since the day Ulfang stared at him across a platter of bleeding meat, since the day—the night—that he killed the first man who saved him. Cold, cleansing hands, twisting in his hair and turning his head from side to side with faint, inexorable force…these will always be marks of horror, not healing.)

(Not for him.)

Maedhros swore, he does not know when, but he swore he would not hurt Belle. Not ever, God help him, and certainly not while his animal frailty revolts in the face of her unearned wounds.

In the fog that surrounds him, he hears Gwindor say,

“Leave off, Belle, leave off. It’s alright. I’ll do it.”

Maedhros is shaking, and not just from the cold.

Gwindor’s hands settle lightly on his shoulders. “Russandol, can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the trouble?”

Maedhros cannot answer that.

“Well,” Gwindor says. “I must know a little, or send you half-mad, it seems. Your hair is full of soap. Something must be done for that.”

Maedhros nods.

“It’s just water.” Those words, again. “Does it…” Gwindor pauses. “Are you feared of it?”

 _No_ , Maedhros answers, or tries to. Instead, he says, “They drowned me.”  _Drowned me, when I was whole, and were horribly tender, when I was broken._  He shudders, to the torture of his back.

Another pause. “‘Course they did.”

 _Yes_ , Maedhros thinks numbly.  _Of course they did._

“What’ll let you stand it?”

Maedhros clings to the edges of the straw pallet, to keep his hands down. “Do it quickly,” he says. “Not kindly.”

 

Gwindor helps him sit up, afterwards, arranges the blanket around his bandaged shoulders without saying a soft word. The sun through the chimney shaft is warm, and so they both pretend not to hear Maedhros’s teeth chattering.

Belle returns. She stands in the doorway, stiff as a statue, looking.

Maedhros feels his face growing hot. He hates himself, for hurting her by other means than force. She must have thought—

“I am sorry, Belle,” he says, tugging the blanket more tightly to himself. His hair has ceased its dripping; short as it is, it dries easily. “I was not myself.”

 _Oh, but you were_ , Morgoth mocks.  _The self we made of you, together._

Belle half shakes herself, and steps inside. It is hard to read her expression, because her features are unlike any others. “Not at all,” she answers. “I know a fair bit about that. I’m sorry, too. For whatever it was that brought harm.”

He ponders this. Ponders this, and reaches up to run a hand through his hair. It is not so short as he thought; his fingers are lost in it. It is beginning to cover the back of his neck, to curl over the tips of his ears. And  _clean_  now. Morgoth proposed to claim that state for himself— _cleanliness_ —but Maedhros cannot grieve to feel less foul.

Cannot grieve for now.

“I’ll go back up,” Belle says, after some brief conversation. She must be offended, for all her patience and forgiveness. Maedhros bids her farewell with subdued civility.

Gwindor stares after her, when she has gone away.

 

The men have just marched out. Maedhros can sit up on his own strength today. The bruises ache more than the flogging wounds, so long as he is careful. Where his skin was burned, it is beginning to itch fiercely, just as he told Sticks. It is also beginning to peel, which is somehow worse.

It has been more than a week, now, since.

Gwindor stands in the doorway, watching the men go out. Maedhros wonders if he really was a soldier once. He does not ask.

Gwindor turns back to look at him. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You seem skittish.”

Maedhros used to be a man. Morgoth made him a child again, an ugly child, and it isn’t Gwindor’s fault that he sees that.

“I am keeping you from your post,” Maedhros says. “I know you say it is under orders, but Gothmog—”

“Now you’re stewing over Gothmog’s likes?” Gwindor comes to sit beside him, folds his arms over his chest. “You weren’t over-worried when you broke order.”

“That was…”  _Haldar_ , and Maedhros stares down at his lap, sick again.

“I know,” Gwindor agrees, hoarsely. “Never mind. Don’t concern yourself with me, Red.”

Maedhros whispers, not looking up, “I must.”

“Why?” Gwindor drops his voice also.

“You’ve been too good to me.” Maedhros speaks quickly, not thinking,  _goddamn it all, not thinking_ —“And that is only punished, here.”

The legs of Gwindor’s stool scrape over the dirt floor as he drags it closer. “Russandol,” he says gravely, no  _Red_  or  _lad_  this time, “Can I ask you something?”

Maedhros’s pulse climbs to staccato rate, but he doesn’t move. He nods.

“Is your real name— _Maitimo_?”

 

 _…why do_ you _hate me, Maitimo?”_

_Gifts are gifts, Maitimo. Even Annatar knows that._

_Stay with me, Maitimo. Stay with me._

The question, as asked, does not matter. Maedhros has slept and eaten, whether he wanted to or not. His mind is a little quicker now. He twists, and his back protests, but he does not flinch. “Is this your way of telling me,” he says, staring Gwindor full in his light eyes, “That he came?”

Gwindor looks almost ashamed.

 “Yes,” Maedhros answers for him. “He came. The bandages, the salves, your dispensation? It was he, not Gothmog, who ordered it.” He is half-certain he will be sick. “Tell me I lie.”

“You do not lie.”

Maedhros lowers himself down.

_Do not forget, you are not my prisoner. You are my prize._

“What did he say?” It is no use asking,  _what did he do_. Not doubt his hands clawed and caressed, and Maedhros does not want to think of that.

Gwindor is strangely reticent, for a man who let slip such information. “He called you that.”

“No doubt he did. And what else?”

“He asked you…if you…he asked you to come back to him.” Gwindor’s voice is low, but his words patter swiftly, like rain drops. “You told him that you would not. Half out of your mind, you were, but you said no.”

Maedhros cannot be grateful for such bravery, come late. He nods.

“It shamed me,” Gwindor says. His eyes are fierce. “I saw you—heard you a little, in his quarters, when they had me working in the mountain. I thought…it doesn’t matter what I thought, ‘cept that I held it against you. Thinking you were wanting to be taken up again, even after…”

“He did not give me these scars,” Maedhros answers sharply. Does he…defend? No,  _God_ , it cannot be that. “Mairon did.”

Gwindor’s eyes darken.

“What…” He will not say Bauglir’s name, Morgoth’s name aloud. “What  _he_  did to me was different.” He catches the knowing pain in Gwindor’s expression, and says, softly, “It is not what is carved into my belly. Perhaps it would be easier if it was.”

Gwindor opens his mouth, then closes it. Every line of his face digs deep.

“He’ll never let me go.” Maedhros feels nothing. Not the grotesque friction of his peeling skin. Not the burns. Not the raw-torn flesh, laced with stiff scabs of dark-dried blood. “He will not let me die, and he will not let me go.” And he—

— _waits_ , for Gwindor to ask him why.  _Why does he keep you, why did he use you, what was your fate that was worse than anything named?_

Gwindor asks, “What can I do?”

 

They meet one night after supper. They are surprisingly conspicuous, in Maedhros’s unasked opinion, but mostly left alone. The men are milling about, not yet ready for sleep, come in from a shorter day than usual.

Is there rest, here? Is there enjoyment? Maedhros did not think so when he first arrived; did not even consider the possibility. As he hoped only for death in the Mountain, he hoped only for unnoticed life in Gothmog’s compound. Not notice. Not friendship.

Nervously, he laces his fingers together.

The meeting is conducted over his head. It is composed of Belle and Gwindor, who flank Maedhros’s cot, and Lem, who is grinding his heels into the dirt and glowering.

“You want to talk here? With  _him_?”

“Lem.” Gwindor’s voice is quiet, but almost a growl.

Lem subsides. His jaw twitches under his rough beard.

“Women’ve been planting,” Belle says. She is here on the pretense of seeing to an abscess in a man’s jaw. Maedhros knew, before, that she was a doctor of sorts, but now he has reason both to be grateful for her skill, and to fear—

_For her?_

_Yes. For her._

Belle adds, “And I heard a little talk, of the new forge. Lem knows more about it.”

The forge. Maedhros is not looking at them; is, for Lem’s sake, pretending not to listen. His gaze, lowered, is level with Lem’s clenched fists. He remembers the pain those hands caused. He remembers all the pains. His prayer medal, Mairon’s knife, the cattle iron, Mairon’s knife again, the lash, the  _please-God-let-me-die_  that stayed trapped in a throat that shouldn’t pray.

 _The forge…_  It wasn’t his tomb, in the end. It is only another prison; one that does not leave him.

“Not that we see much of it, front grunts that we are,” Lem supplies. “I dunno who  _he_  took to build it. Maybe the new batch we heard rumor of. We’ve seen the smoke. Heard the seers, heard ‘em talking.” He pauses. “Chrissakes, you really want to do all this afore—”

Gwindor makes an impatient motion with one hand. “I’m not leaving him unwatched.” It’s as if Maedhros both is and isn’t there. “He’s not a spy.”

Lem claps his hands on his knees and leans down. His face comes close to Maedhros’s, and Maedhros does his best not to shy away from the man’s rank breath.

“Not a spy, Red?”

“Fucking hell,” says Gwindor. “Out of his face—you’ll call attention.”

 _But you knew_ , Maedhros thinks.  _That he hated me_. No doubt Gwindor is allowing them to be seen together so that the other men will think Maedhros is being set in his rightful place.

Even here, he is a prop.

_No. That is not fair. Not to Gwindor._

His heart seizes up in his chest. He has even forgotten that Lem is staring him down.

In answer to Lem’s threat, Belle says nothing. She marches around the edge of the cot, and sits down upon it, forcing Lem to move back. Maedhros curls his knees to one side, to accommodate her, careful of his leg.

Lem breathes heavily through his nose. “Whether our master’s got much to do with it, they’re making do a mile or so from here. We heard that blast, what was it, two months past? And now Silas saw a wagon trundling up the roads. Raw metal, he thought. We were far afield, that day.”

“Railroad?” Belle asks. “Less to buy, if they make it. Spikes and such.”

Gwindor doesn’t answer.

 _Weapons_ , Maedhros thinks, what skin he has left prickling.  _Morgoth wants weapons._

“That’s all my news,” Lem says. Muttering, he stalks away.

Maedhros would blush if his cheeks were not scorched to constant redness. He is privy to a fight over himself, of which he wants no part.

“Gwindor,” Belle begins, and Gwindor throws up a hand.

 “You best get back, Belle.”

“You’re right.” Maedhros glances up, she has both hands in her hair as if thinking, elbows tucked to her breast. Her hair is cut rough and short; it barely touches her collar. Longer, still, than his. And yet—like his, rather ordinary. Something it is possible to… _regain_.

_Oh, you wretch._

There is a sudden lull in the men’s murmuring. The door nearest Maedhros—one of two—is thrust open by an unseen hand, and everyone goes still and stiff. The children entered by it before; he does not expect them now.

Harris, who appears, does not look at Belle. Does not seem to care that she is there, a woman in men’s quarters.

To Gwindor, he says, “Master wants to see you.”

 

Having rested every night for the count of eight or nine days, Maedhros is able, at last, to keep himself awake. Gwindor steps inside and shuts the door quietly behind him. He is not moving differently than he was when he went out.

He sees Maedhros. Must see his eyes bright in the dark, because he swears softly.

“You should be sleeping.”

Maedhros inches his body downwards obediently, clenching his teeth when it hurts badly enough. Gwindor is at his side in another instant, helping him.

“Ought I be flattered, Red? You worried?”

Maedhros nods. Silence is strength, he tells himself, even in giving an answer.

Gwindor sighs, crouches down. “Nothing we both wouldn’t expect. I got off with no punishment.”

“None?”

“None. God, you’re shaking.  _Russandol_.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Give me your hand.”

“No.”

“You like that? To make my life even more troublesome?”

Maedhros delivers his hand.

Gwindor feels for his pulse with blunt fingers. That is a doctor’s trick; perhaps he learned it from Belle.

“Jesus. You should drink more. Take the edge off.”

It is a joke. Maedhros cannot smile at it.

“What did he ask of you?”

Gwindor lets go of his wrist. “Asked after you, lad. I told him you’d learned your lesson well. Which we both know you haven’t.”

Maedhros shifts, favoring the bad leg. “You lied for me.”

“That the thanks I get?”

Maedhros’s eyes swim. “They’ll kill you.”

“Aye, they’ll kill us all.”

“Cruelly.” Maedhros is grateful that Gwindor cannot make out his face well, as he says that. “Please.”

Gwindor unrolls his own bed roll, sits cross-legged upon it, and begins to rub his shoulder as he does most nights. “I’m like you,” he says, after a moment.

“What?”

(All this, still in their lowest whispers.)

“They won’t kill me. They’re fond of…watching me live. Understand?”

 _Yes._  “Gothmog, perhaps. But—” Even now, when the man’s hands have covered and ruined every inch of him, he does not want to say  _Bauglir_.

Gwindor ceases his efforts and stretches out. “He asked when I might return to working,” he says softly, changing the subject.

Maedhros is diverted by this new reminder of an older fear. “Of course,” he answers, trying to keep his tone light. “You must be missed.”

“Kind of you.” Gwindor pitches restlessly from side to the other. “I told him it would be…it would be a little while yet.”

Maedhros almost bolts straight up, but recalls, in time, what such swift motion would do to his wounds. “You didn’t. You shouldn’t—shouldn’t speak like that, to him.”

“What other choice had I?”

“Obeying him?”

“Thus  _disobeying_  Bauglir,” Gwindor retorts. “Lad, I can’t. I won’t.”

Maedhros thinks fast—or as fast he can. “You could work half-days. Appease Gothmog, and still be near me from noon on.”

“No.”

“Consider it. I am almost well.”

“You had more blood on the ground than in your body, ten days ago. I cut you down, remember? No, you don’t. You were half-dead.”

“And now better enough to argue.” Maedhros must not raise his voice, but he pours all the urgency he can into his words. “Gwindor, please. You must try to keep both of them content. If you do not—”

“You haven’t kept them content. Refusing them left and right, I’d say.”

Maedhros covers his face in his hands. “ _Fuck_.”

“Go to sleep,” Gwindor orders. “I’ll think it over. Red rascal.”

 

It was a good plan; a good scheme. Gwindor grumbled, but having slept on it, he saw the reason in it. He left Maedhros with many admonitions (spoken quickly and in an undertone) to stay exactly where he was, to try nothing foolish.

 _Back at noon_ , Gwindor vowed.

Maedhros had no intention of disobeying. He stayed exactly there, on the narrow cot, aching, oh, every inch of him aching. He was there when the bell stopped ringing; when the compound fell silent; when the door darkened.

His throat draws closed like it harbors a noose within it. In the doorway—Lem.


	16. a help in doubt and need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is having trouble following, I try to have this be a standalone work, but it is important to read the supplementary POVs. Before this chapter, you should read "ah, my foes, and oh, my friends" https://archiveofourown.org/works/20801642.
> 
> For convenience, there is now a secondary series called All That Glitters: Angband, which collects the relevant fics.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and if you feel so inclined, please leave a review! I would enjoy your thoughts.

The bird with the flightless wing. The three-legged dog. The deer with its hollow ribcage, gaunt and diseased.

These are contrary to nature, and must die. The world is better off without them.

 

“Maedhros,” Morgoth says, both hands scrabbling beneath Maedhros’s throat, thumbs stroking him beneath his ears. “Maedhros, it is not meet of you to be so wild, when we have your very life to discuss.”

Is he wild? He does not know what he is, except a scream that emanates not from mouth, but from bone. He can feel Morgoth’s hands, yes, but he is not sure where his own are. He turns his head, restless, but Morgoth will not let him move. He wonders whether Morgoth came to him, or he to Morgoth. He wonders if Morgoth’s voice and touch have taken the place of sleep, binding dreams away from waking. Madness, after all, appears in many forms.

“Cosomoco, for shame. See what you have done. You should know better, than to order him to kneel.”

 

Before— _this_ —

 

 _Get him up,_  Gothmog orders, his thick boots thumping heavily as he walks—away—from Gwindor’s body. The gun dangling from his hand is death averted, which is, of course, not the same thing as mercy. Left to bleed, Gwindor looks frail, looks inhuman. Maedhros has been beaten about the head before, hard enough to send him unconscious and unfeeling. He came back. Slowly, but he came back.

If Gothmog wanted Gwindor dead, he would have shot him between the eyes. Maedhros’s hands claw at the earthen floor, and he chokes on phlegm and bile.

The men across the room are silent; their laughter gone.

Without warning, Goodley comes at him again. Goodley who, some time ago (time is not measurable, in this state of agony) kicked a little at Maedhros’s leg. The leg was already—bruised, or even broken, bad enough that walking hurt, but Lem tossed him to the floor and threw his whole weight on it.

It was almost the first thing he did.

Maedhros has not felt such pain since branding. Someday, if— _when_ —he lives and crawls once more, he will have to catalogue the burning horror of the lash, aided in its rank by the fear of what marks it leaves; the torturous rawness of the flaying knife; the searing destruction of the iron.

There is, perhaps, no  _worst_. There is only Maedhros, writhing in unbearable light.

 

“You are weeping,” Morgoth observes, shifting one thumb to paw at Maedhros’s cheek, “But I am not deceived. You are never so weak as you pretend to be, Maitimo. You play the child in hopes that I shall be tender. But upon my word, what patience have you earned today?”

Blearily, Maedhros thinks that his master is not quite wrong. Lem did not kill him quickly enough, and Maedhros fought. Gwindor seemed to betray him and Maedhros—fought, which is to say, he did not despair, no matter how much he wanted to.

_He called for Bauglir because of what you told him. Because he does not want you to die. And you do not want to die either, so be grateful._

 

_Gratitude . . . Feanor would feel none. He never felt gratitude for anything in his life—but you? You are grateful for every scrap that has ever been thrown in your way. You will be grateful, in time, even for pain._

 

Goodley hoists him up, hard hands under Maedhros’s arms.  _The world is better off without him,_  without the smell of blood and the crude weapon in his sleeve dragging against his skin, Gwindor sprawled out like Haldar was, like the priest was, like Athair was, like—

Goodley forces him forward, and Maedhros faints.

 

Gothmog drags his head back by the hair, forces something strong down his throat. Maedhros gags and coughs and  _wakes_ , which is the point.

Even now, he knows that Gothmog is close to killing him. It is the first thing he remembers.

Gothmog releases his hair, cuffs him down, and stalks to his chair in the corner. Maedhros does not want to make a sound, would give much for composure, but he cannot help the sobs that rise in his scraping throat. His leg feels rebroken at the slightest touch. He coddles it as best he can, but the sick bend where no bend should be makes him nauseated. He is shaking violently, moreover, and weeping. He tastes the salt of his lips, keeps his eyes shut and his head down, and knows that they wait for Morgoth.

 

The bird with the flightless wing—

 

“Good heavens, he looks half-dead.”

“He’s gone and snapped his thigh-bone,” Gothmog rumbles, standing up. Maedhros can see a hundred crowding, crowing shadows in the room, but he also sees silver. A flash of silver, on the rough table beside Gothmog’s chair.

“And he did the snapping, am I to believe?” Morgoth is filling the doorway, with his perennial black frock-coat. Maedhros knows this without looking.

“One of the other thralls laid into him. He ain’t been popular here.” Gothmog’s boots appear in Maedhros’s line of vision. Gothmog’s hand wraps the back of his neck, hauls him to his feet.

Maedhros  _screams_ , mouth and leg together, but he keeps his lips closed as he does it, grinding his teeth.

“What a sound!” Morgoth takes a few long, deliberate strides, seats himself in the chair Gothmog just vacated. “Bring him to me, Cosomoco. Bring me this poor creature.”

Maedhros struggles. He cannot help it. He recoils like an animal spun on its back, trying to get away from hands that  _will_  compel him. Gothmog hauls him to his feet—with all his might, Maedhros rests his weight on his good leg (the one without the shackle, without the bone at two angles), but it is not enough. He hops and drags rather than walks. Gothmog’s breath is hot on his cheek.

Gothmog killed Athair. Gothmog as good as killed Amrod. Gothmog left Gwindor, bleeding and still.

Maedhros sobs again.

Morgoth’s great pale hands caress the rough-cut arms of Gothmog’s chair. Athair’s ring still twinkles on his finger. It will always be there; it will always be silver, in the dying light. Before he meets Morgoth’s eyes, Maedhros’s gaze follows the other shot of silver in the room.

There, on the table, something else he knows.

(The spurs he once wore proudly, swiftly. He remembers that first tavern like a blow, blood pumping hot in his veins as he won at cards, quaffed liquor, pressed his open mouth against the barmaid’s creamy throat.)

He sets his jaw as tightly as he can.

“Kneel,” Gothmog whispers viciously, and lets him fall.

 

_If I even prayed for strength…what would you give me?_

(He would know them all, if he saw them.  Of course, they might not know him. But in the moments now, when he tries despite his every resolve to call on his undeserved saints, he cannot quite make their faces out. The color of eyes, the shape of smiles. He can remember every twisted word that Morgoth gifted him, can remember every turn of Mairon’s knife.

He cannot hear the beloved voices clearly, anymore.)

 

“Enough,” Morgoth says, the third time Maedhros cannot bear himself up, and falls, choking with pain, in a heap of ravaged limbs. “Cosomoco, for shame...”

Maedhros looks behind Morgoth, to the wall where sunlight does not reach. There are few windows, in Gothmog’s little room, and there is nobody behind Morgoth.

“Maitimo, look at me.”

 

_You can help me destroy him._

_You’re a crazy one, Red._

_I know._

_Very well, then. Tell me how._

Maedhros blinks hard, to clear the tears from his eyes. Morgoth is smiling. The same hungry smile as always.

“I shall call you  _Maedhros_ , if you are ready to speak like a man.”

A scoff from Gothmog.

Morgoth beckons. Away from Gothmog, towards Morgoth—Gwindor was right. This is the safer path. Maedhros crawls, both arms and one leg. The other drags, and he swallows a whine.

“You have sat at my feet before,” Morgoth reminds him, softly. “You were stronger than, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you were whipped, Maedhros. Is that true?”

Gothmog is silent.

“Yes.”

Morgoth leans back, steeples his hand beneath his chin, and stares hard. Maedhros shifts his good leg beneath him, tucks his hands around his elbows. It is just enough to keep him sane, to hold himself close like that.  _Just_  enough, because his broken leg is flung out beside him as if it does not belong to him. He does not want it touched.

“My overseer promised me that he would see you brought to heel. Instead, you are useless.” Morgoth presses his lips firmly together, then repeats: “ _Useless_.”

_Anything…Please, sir. I will do anything…_

“Not useless,” Maedhros croaks. He clears his throat, considers the dangers of spitting on Gothmog’s floorboards, swallows. Repeats, “Not useless.”

“Oh?” Morgoth’s brows quirk upwards, peaked with incredulity. “What have you to give me?”

Maedhros reaches into his sleeve.

 

 _Here_ , said Belle, and laid it on his lap. He had grown used to her mumbling speech, in the course of her nighttime visits. Gwindor understood her always, as did the children, and Maedhros could make out most of her words now.

He did not question the plain, uncarved comb aloud. His face must have.

 _It can be good to feel human again_ , Belle said. She smiled a little; it was an awful sight, and she knew it, for she lowered her head and pushed herself clumsily to her feet.

 _Thank you_ , Maedhros said, ashamed. _Truly._

When she was gone, he touched the teeth of the comb with the point of his finger. Remembered the edge of Mairon’s blade shearing up the back of his scalp.

Snapped the slender thing in two.

 

“What is this?” Morgoth takes it. Rolls it between his fingers.

“A weapon I made to fight the man who attacked me. I knew I would need it, sooner or later.”

“Should have known better than to put this one with the women, hey?” Morgoth tilts a glance in Gothmog’s direction. “Mairon left you  _that_  warning on his skin, rather conveniently, I thought. So, Maedhros. Which fair lass gifted you this weapon, then?”

“I stole it.” Maedhros stays stolid, or as stolid as he can be, what with the blur and dagger of his leg. “Stole it, and turned it into something that could kill.”

“And,” Morgoth purrs, silk-smooth, “You have chosen to gift it to me. Why?”

“Because,” Maedhros says, and does not look at Athair’s ring—”I am begging, but not useless. If you will let me come back to you, I—”

“Ah, ah.” Morgoth raises his finger. Moistens his lips. “ _Let_ , you say? As if my goodwill was your only blockade? You  _want_  my favor? You  _want_  to return?”

 

_I’m like you. They won’t kill me. They’re…fond, of watching me live._

“No,” Maedhros says. “I want to die.”

Morgoth is satisfied. “If I leave you in his care, you will. Is not that right, Cosomoco?”

“You say the word, sir,” Gothmog drawls, “And I’ll riddle him with bullets. Or snap his neck.”

Maedhros does not wince.

“More trouble than he’s worth?” Morgoth’s hands ripple, a slow-flowing wave of fingers, over the rough wood. “More trouble, even after you beat and broke him?”

There is an edge to Gothmog’s voice, one that Maedhros would not have supposed he would sharpen on Morgoth. “I never asked for him. I’d have killed him long ago.”

 _You knew this_ , Maedhros tells his beating heart.  _You knew this already._

“Gothmog will fulfill your heart’s desire. Death, for an ugly body and a weary soul.” Morgoth frowns. “Should I give that to you?”

Maedhros’s mouth is dry, but he answers clearly. Morgoth must wonder, how he bore the mask. Morgoth must know that Maedhros’s voice is a fickle, changed thing…he wore it down himself.

Maedhros says, “I would rather make a bargain.”

Gothmog heaves a sigh. A patient sigh; he has regained that patience, after having it sorely tested.

_I will test your mettle. But oh, I would think afore you test mine again._

Morgoth tilts his long-jawed face. “Do you hear him, Cosomoco?”

Gothmog grumbles his assent. “I did.”

“What did you  _do_ to him, that he would rather bargain with me than be finished by your hand? He survived  _Mairon_. Come closer, Cosomoco. Strip off that sorry shirt, and show me boldly how you treated him.”

Maedhros finds that breathing is not enough to keep calm.

_No. No, it must be. You must not panic. He shall not kill you here, before Bauglir. What is one more humiliation?_

Gothmog advances. Maedhros must not flinch; must not give in to the overwhelming urge to cry out,  _I can do it_.

He submits to the shirt being drawn up over his head. He raises his arms. He breathes. He does not dwell long, on the memory of the last time Gothmog’s hands were so close to his shoulders, his spine, his lacerated ribs.

Morgoth stands, strides. He walks in a slow circle like a gentleman prospecting a dog chained for his review.  _How well can the whelp hunt?_  asks the gentleman, and perhaps he prods at it with his cane.

“Let us all be truth-tellers here,” Morgoth says. “You and I have already made plain our minds, Cosomoco, as to when and how the lad should be punished. He was not well-trained to be a man, and certainly not well-trained to be a slave! The lash must be his teacher, since he swore for so long that he would have no other. But I find myself displeased, this day, over the carelessness that crippled him. I have my suspicions, I admit, over the origin of  _this_.” And with those words, he sets the pointed toe of his leather shoe against the place where the bone is broken.

 

Maedhros returns to new pain. His face is cradled against one of Morgoth’s broad, clammy palms. His back is being slowly spidered by the fingers of Morgoth’s other hand.

“You bit him deep here, and here,” Morgoth muses, finding the hollow of a wound, and Maedhros retches, gasps, sets his leg afire again. “Gently now, Maitimo.” The moon of his face is very close. “Trust me, if you want me to forgive you.”

Gothmog stands above them both. Would Gothmog kill Morgoth, given this chance? Trigger finger itching, then satisfied, with brain and blood red and gleaming, and those dark eyes gone flat.

Maedhros breathes through his nose, now. His mouth is half-covered by Morgoth’s thumb.

“It was a whipping,” Gothmog says. “Thirty lashes, no more, no less. The kind of roping I’d give to any man, woman, or beast as broke order. This one didn’t even scream.”

“Then Mairon holds the prize above you yet,” Morgoth says, still in that quiet voice. “Very good. You have twisted our Maitimo’s pride in new ways, I perceive, and I will now hear his… _terms_.” He releases Maedhros’s face, his anguished back, and returns to his seat.

“I will come back to you,” Maedhros says, his shirt balled in his hands. His hands will tremble if he frees them from their hold. His whole body will tremble. “And I will serve you.”

Morgoth laughs, deep in his throat. “Do you hear that, Cosomoco?”

“I do.”

“Perhaps you accomplished something, after all.” Morgoth runs his long index finger over Athair’s ring. “What does it mean to serve me, Maitimo? You are no longer beautiful, no longer strong, no longer quick-footed. What service do you offer? I am a man much occupied with matters of state, with matters of progress and industry. You are a grasping brat who has wept more over his father’s name than his own blood. Though of course…” and Morgoth nods, his eyes dropped beneath Maedhros’s chin, “Blood and your father’s name have made a proper marriage, there.”

Maedhros, Maitimo,  _Lord, let him only be Russandol, now_ —whispers, “I offer you my father.”

 

Gwindor, earnest and penitent as he should never have to be:  _I thought…it doesn’t matter what I thought, ‘cept that I held it against you._

Maedhros betrayed his own kin. There is no darker deed, no baser shame.

 

“Your father?” Morgoth is all eagerness, unable to contain himself. “At last?”

“For terms,” Maedhros says. His tongue is numb, but he plies it onward. “A single term.”

“Name it, that I may consider it.” There is a flame, as amber through dark glass, kindled in the depths of Morgoth’s eyes. Or perhaps that is merely the afternoon light, dying.

“The thralls,” Maedhros says. “They are to be treated well. Not killed or maimed. None of them punished for my sake.” He throws the dice. “Not even the guard.”

“The guard?” Morgoth narrows his eyes. “Is he the one who hurt you?”

“Him?” Maedhros curls his lip, slightly, and then forces his face slack again. “No, sir. It is only that he would not kill me.”

Morgoth chuckles again. “Nor should he have. You had a knife all this time, lad—but we have been down  _that_  road before. You have a Catholic coward on your hands, Cosomoco. He will not take his own life.  _They_  think it sends them to hell.” He shrugs. “Ah, me. There is nothing for it but a change. He is not in your hands any longer. He and this faithful guard shall be mine to manage, now.”

Gothmog sputters. “Gwindor? He’s no guard. He’s one of our best workers.”

Morgoth asks, almost coldly—”So I may not have him?”

Gothmog subsides, at least in tone. “Well now, I would prefer if you didn’t.”

Maedhros cannot see Gothmog. He can only hear him, can only feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickle at each baritone reply.

Morgoth blinks lazily, mollified. He is pleased; content, even. Maedhros knows he is thinking of Feanor, would know that even if the man were not twisting the ring on his left hand.

(Maedhros is thinking of Feanor, too.)

Morgoth says, “We have all of us laid terms upon the table. I shall think them over—favorably, I assure you. This is a prosperous hour.”

 

The forest greets the mountain from the east. Maedhros heard mention of the budding forge, at the evening parlay that doubtless sealed his fate, but he did not know where the forge was. It is sensible to build a forge close to a ready supply of fuel, though, and so it comes as no surprise that the wide-mouthed cave is a stone’s throw from the woodland.

Maedhros has no bundle of spare clothes, no belongings. He has only the heavy splint on his leg, and the heavier shackle. Morgoth prepared the splint himself, boasting that he studied medicine once, but when he finished fastening it to Maedhros’s pain-wracked leg, he said,

“There now, you shall not heal  _too_ well. We cannot have you on dancing feet.”

Another horror. Maedhros grips the sides of the cart, which trundles over the rough road, rattling his teeth and his joints and of course, the broken bone. Morgoth will let him live, Morgoth will not make him walk half a mile to his new post, Morgoth accepted his terms—

But Morgoth will keep him lame, as he keeps him living.

Once at the forge, Maedhros is regarded with suspicion by the aproned workers. They are paid men, he thinks. There are burns on their hands and sparks pocked in their cheeks, but they are unshackled and not so filthy as Gothmog’s slaves. Maedhros, in his thrall’s garb and dragging splint, keeps his head down.

 

 _I have come to a conclusion_ , Morgoth says, after he has savored the tense silence for a long while.  _Solomon’s conclusion, though—I hope—less bloody. Since this guard kept the lad alive, and had the wherewithal to send for_ me _, the two shall not be parted. Rather, they shall work one week in the forge, where Maedhros shall show us his father’s tricks, and then one week in your fields, where you may labor them as you choose. What think you, Cosomoco?_

Gothmog makes no argument.

_What think you, Maedhros? Have I not been gracious again, in protecting your life from harm? There are not even any whips, in this forge._

Maedhros looks over his shoulder, once, as the cart (driven by Harris) grows smaller and smaller in the distance. Smoke is rising from the compound. The sky is clear, and he is…he is farther from freedom now than he was a day ago.

The smell of burning, of hot metal, fills his nose.

He takes one halting step, then another. Into the cave, into the forge, into a place that must always look both like his father’s heart and his darkest nightmare.

There is a leather apron and heavy gloves, waiting for him.

Gwindor is nowhere to be seen.

 

Maedhros puts on the apron. Draws one glove over his left hand, but leaves the right free for now. Sees the bench before him, and all the tools and metals that he told Morgoth he would need.

There is no prayer for one who betrays willingly, knowing he must do so again and again.

Maedhros reaches for the hammer.

 

There are four other men in the forge. Two are grizzled brothers whose principal purpose is creating the spikes and plates for the railroad tracks. One is a rail of a man whose province is repairs. The last is a slim shade of a boy with dark curls tied back at the nape of his neck, a pale pointed face, and eyes so dark they are almost black.

Maedhros feels a pit of unease open in his stomach. He is diverted, momentarily, from the constant torment of his leg, and from his fear that Gwindor shall not return at all. The boy is primarily an errand-runner, but he also has a small corner of the cavern for himself, where he pores over a table of trinkets.

 _He reminds you of Curufin, that is all._  Maedhros swipes at his brow. His hair sticks to his forehead with sweat already; the forge-heat is lowering, tremendous,  _familiar_. Every brand, from his foot to his thigh to the thin skin over his sternum, throbs anew.

He tries to be grateful, for what he chose.

 

 _You have been given a chance_ , says the cold voice in his mind.  _A traitorous chance, but a chance nonetheless. Do not waste it with your weakness. There shall not be another._

He blinks away the image of his mocking face.

 

A new development: shortly after Maedhros’s arrival, guards were posted outside. Only two, but they have guns at their hips and watch him warily. One of them is a vicious ghost: Murphy, who used to take him to and from his cell. Maedhros catches his eye, once, when he is drawing more water for his slack tub. There is a pump and a well just outside the entrance. The water is cold on his hands.

Murphy grins broadly. He does not speak. No doubt it amuses him, to see the three-legged dog.

Maedhros feels again that spark of hatred, the yearning to tear and kill.

His pain brings him back to earth and reason again; hauling water is a torture in itself.

 

Inside the forge— _the forge is the oven and hearth, you are in a smithy_ , Feanor rebukes him, and he shudders. This was an old argument between Feanor and his sons; nearly every other man Maedhros met, including Morgoth, used the terms interchangeably. But, in the smithy then, he has begun by making a few flat blades, to teach his hands again. He must make his father’s guns, and he  _does_ know how, but his hands are weak and shaking, and he weeps a little. His tears dry quickly in the rising heat.

The day is long. The first of seven.

He wishes he knew if Gwindor was dead.

 

When evening comes, the three men and the pale boy wash their hands under the pump, and join the guards for supper. They roast some beef on a spit over a campfire that Murphy builds. Jokes are made, and Murphy says, “Leave a few scraps for the hounds.”

“Where’s the other ‘un?” asks his mate.

“Still chopping.” The forge-workers are listening; Maedhros can see it in the cant of their necks. Murphy surveys Maedhros, grins again when his gaze reaches Maedhros’s leg, and says, “Go on and find him, Red Hound. Follow the sound of the axe.”

Maedhros ducks his head and goes. Slowly, very slowly, into the forest’s mouth. He is grimacing before he has taken five steps, grimacing and gnawing on his tongue, but he...he  _hopes_.

Behind him, the other guard asks, “What if he doesn’t come back?”

Murphy snorts a laugh. “His leg’s in pieces. He won’t get far.”

Maedhros thinks of snapping Murphy’s spine, of leaving him to die a long death. He will need more strength for that.

He keeps going.

The forest closes gently over him. The trees are ancient trees, with kind, gnarled bodies and whispering arms. Maedhros treads on the bracken. Wonders if it would be easier to crawl.

The smell of pine is beautiful and vile. He swallows hard, deliberate, to keep himself from retching.

There. There is an axe ringing.

(Maedhros met Mairon in the woods.)

He shivers, and his leg gives against the cruel splint, and he cries.

The axe falls silent.

_It is not Mairon. You know it is not Mairon. Murphy would not dare call him a dog._

_I know, but I never know._

“Red?”

Stepping out among the trees, a bundle of branches under one arm, an axe over the other shoulder, a stained bandage wrapped around his head.

Gwindor.

Maedhros stands and gapes. Then he shuts his mouth, pressing his lips miserably tight, because the tears are starting down his cheeks again.

“God bless me, Red. It’s really you.” Gwindor drops the branches, and the axe, and strides towards him. Maedhros stands quite still, as Gwindor stretches out his arms.

To embrace him? That cannot be, for no one has done so in friendship since—

Gwindor’s hands settle only on his shoulders. He must be remembering—yes, the wounds, yes, the weakness. How Maedhros does not want, now, to be touched.

(Does he?)

“God,” Gwindor says again, almost ashen despite his sun-browned skin. “Were we that lucky?”

Maedhros falls against him. It is half exhaustion and half need.

Gwindor makes a curious sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and then he clears his throat. He claps the back of Maedhros’s neck, well above his shoulders, where there is no present hurt.

“Alright, Russandol,” he says, low. “You’re sly as the fox, no doubt about it. Angry at me, too, I’ll wager.”

“No,” Maedhros whispers. “Not angry.”

“Well, we’ve no time to speak of it now. You’d better look it, for a bit.”

Maedhros understands, and nods.

 

They are subjected to picking the scraps off the spit, and eating the remains of a loaf of bread. They do not look at each other. It is not difficult for Maedhros to assume a sour expression; a day on his feet has sent him almost delirious with prolonged effort. Holding to focus, to  _control_ , is enough to absorb him.

Murphy kicks out the ashes before they are finished, making Maedhros cough.

“You two will sleep in the forge,” Murphy says. “Chained to the benches, lest you think you can try anything.”

The dry bread rises in the back of Maedhros’s throat.

 _He is alive, you fool._ You  _are alive. Is that not what matters? What use is your fear?_

He is twitching and restless despite himself, and Murphy laughs, quietly enough so that is only for the two of them to hear.

“Heard you were given another taste of the rope-medicine,” Murphy mutters. “How’d you take it?”

Maedhros bites his lips. Hears nothing, sees nothing, but the heavy lock closing.

Gwindor is chained by his ankle manacle; Maedhros, because of his splint, is chained at the wrist. They are given a horse blanket apiece. Gwindor protests at being treated the same as his charge, and has his lip split by Murphy’s knuckles for his trouble.

Maedhros rests his temple against the cool, hard leg of the bench. In this position, he can pretend that he is not bound. He says, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s all part of the game,” Gwindor slurs, settling himself on his blanket. The chain jangles as he shifts. “You know that.”

Maedhros does know that. Moreover, and more crucially, at the moment, Maedhros knows what night looks like in a forge.

 

 _You must wonder,_  Mairon whispers, eyes still yellow in the dark,  _What_   _I am going to do first._

Maedhros heaves in a breath. It is a little too thick  _not_  to betray him.

“What is it, lad?” Gwindor says, sitting up. “What did they do to you, last night?”

“It is—”  _It is not last night, it is never what can be predicted or named_ — “I am a coward,” Maedhros whispers in return. “That is all. Pay me no mind; you have done your duty, and more than it.”

“I kept you from dying, best I could,” Gwindor agrees. “The rest was not much more than dumb luck, as I said. We’ve got to keep sane here, Red. You might want to start talking, if you want to keep sane.”

It is a reasonable request, from a man who was drawn unwittingly into a battle of life and death and hideous vengeance. But Maedhros knows the truth, even if he cannot tell it. “If I started talking,” he says, with a faint, savage laugh, “We neither of us would stay sane.”

“Likewise,” Gwindor says grimly. “You needn’t say what destroyed you. Only tell me what we can  _use_.”

“Use?” Maedhros’s leg throbs. And yes, there is that damnable wetness in his eyes again. He lifts the hand that isn’t laden, and presses the heel of his palm against the damp lashes.

“To do what we agreed.” Gwindor speaks only a little above a whisper, which is wise, though there is not much risk. The worker’s quarters are elsewhere—a small cabin a few score yards from the mouth of the forge, and the guards are taking shifts by the dead fire. The wind is high, tonight, and muffles any voices. “To do what you asked me to.”

(Morgoth asks for no supper. He does not speak at all, for a long while.  He sits, while the sun goes down, and Gothmog sits too, in a chair on the far side of the room, which doubtless, he does not prefer.

Is it possible to go blind with pain? On the floor between them, Maedhros is certain that his leg will never heal. It is now yet another piece of the prison that shall not let him go—he cannot run, he cannot even walk, he cannot fight, and he does not yet know if Morgoth will even agree—)

(Is this what Gwindor wants to hear?)

“I do not want you to endanger yourself for me again.” Maedhros runs careful fingers over the shackle at his wrist. His wrists are still healing from where they were rubbed bloody by the ropes. Belle bandaged them, along with the rest of him, and they are the least of his worries—save for now, when harsh metal stings and weighs. “I know what I said, what I asked of you. It was not fair. It was not—”

He is so very tired, but he shall not sleep here. He brought the hammer down today, brought the hammer down and saw its marks. Cooled the steel (as he was taught), made himself Mairon and Feanor in one (as he was taught). Made himself neither of these things.

_I want to go home._

The world stands still, subterranean and dormant and  _listening_ , for pleas such as that.

“I cannot die here until I have made something of myself,” he continues in a gasp, hoping that enough words will drive away whatever gaping maw of memory threatens to devour him. “I know what I must do. But you should not have to—”

Gwindor scoffs. “If this is all you have to say, Red, then go to sleep.”

Maedhros falls silent.

“Listen here,” Gwindor amends, more gently. “I’m all ginned up myself. Feel as if I shan’t sleep  _or_  wake if I don’t set straight what our next move is. Yes,  _ours_ , Russandol. The turn of this nightmare—turn of us both being still ‘live and kicking—makes it  _ours_. But you’re nursing a broken bone and I’m not in my right head yet. We both would be better off dead to the world for a few hours. That’s what Belle would say.”

It is a rope, thrown.

Maedhros takes it. “How is she?”

“It was she who found me, before I came to. The littlest one saw me first. He’s always sneaking, as you well know.”

 _Frog._  Maedhros thinks of the small hands in his hair, inquisitive. The round dark eyes meeting his in…friendship.

Hoarsely, then: “I do.”

“Poor Belle was half-mad, seeing as you were dragged off to God-knows-where, and I looked worse for it.”

Belle’s heart is as tender as the children’s. Maedhros can only imagine, how such a sight would hurt her.  “I am sorry.”

“For Lem going stark raving mad?” Gwindor speaks too loudly. recovers himself. “I—”

“He was your friend. You needn’t hate him, for my sake. I know what I am.”

Gwindor sighs. “If I warn’t locked in, I’d come over there and knock some sense into you, Red, I really would.”

Maedhros slumps a little. Leaves off plucking at the shackle, and knots his hand in the horse blanket instead. “But Belle has seen you, since?”

“Aye. She was still sick with worry over you. We—we didn’t  _know_. And then me being marched off, with no notion of where I was going…”

_The two shall not be parted._

Maedhros grazes his ragged lower lip with his teeth, but does not bite. “You were part of my bargain,” he admits. “With Bauglir.”

Gwindor’s pause is mercifully brief. “Guessed as much. How’d you do it?”

“Showed him my knife. Said you wouldn’t kill me.” Maedhros smiles a little, in the dark. “He very much liked to think that you would not kill me.”

Gwindor huffs a breath, or a laugh. It really might have been a laugh. “He doesn’t know me very well, then. I’m awful near to killing you at every other moment, Red.”

“Perhaps I’ll need you to, someday.” Mairon is still waiting in all the corners and crevices of this shadowed place, but he has laid aside the branding iron; he shall not apply it to cringing flesh tonight, save in dreams.

“And you’re off again,” Gwindor grumbles. “Not another word, you hear?”

Maedhros complies.

“Wait.” Gwindor again. “Can you lie down?”

“I think so.”

“Suppose I don’t need to tell you to be careful of your leg. G’night.”

His brothers are all around him, in this moment when he must listen to someone else fall asleep. The silence is comfortable, if only for an instant. The silence is comfortable and Maedhros is not alone. He muffles his mouth with his free hand.

 

_Were we that lucky?_

They rise early. Gwindor is sent to the forest; Maedhros swallows a few mouthfuls of breakfast and dons the leather apron again. The fresh air, before the fire burns long, floods the cavern entrance. It tastes as sweet as clean water—indeed, almost sweeter.

He stands at the bench in the glittering half-rays of the morning. His leg is swollen and ungainly; every visible scar is vicious and red. He is a creature quite unlike the men who made him, metal beaten into an unrecognizable shape.

 

Maedhros begins to fashion a gun.

 


	17. memory heavy upon me

“I don’t think it ought to look like that,” Gwindor says.

“It’s broken.” Maedhros is flat on his back, which means that his arm is suspended above his head, the cuff digging into his wrist. He cannot sleep like this; he cannot sleep sitting up. He shifts between one state and the other, each night.

By day, the world shifts, too.

“The swelling is worse.”

“It isn’t.” But Maedhros is lying, and tired of lying. He averts his eyes from where his ankle protrudes. It is clearly misshapen, even in the dark. “You know nothing of medicine, do you?”

“Don’t need to.” Never let it be said that Gwindor cannot be stubborn.

Maedhros imagines, first, that there is no pain, and second, that the injured leg doubles in size each day, until it destroys the cast that twists and supports it.

He does not remember what it was like, to live without pain. Soon, he supposes, he will forget what it was to stand firmly on two feet. He does not say as much to Gwindor, who is already worried, but he knows that the agony shows in his face, in the careful way that he moves. He has become a little better, at least, at keeping silent.

Even Gothmog said he did not scream.

By day, be builds through the anguish, through the clumsiness that flourished in his hands even before he was a slave and a dead man. He could not easily make beauty; perhaps some might have said he did not need to. He wore it on his face, in his rich hair, in his well-cut clothes.

Bitterly, that time is past. But even while he was beautiful, he could not deny that he fought and cheated and killed with his hands far better than he did anything else. Music and art were harder-won. Still, his brothers had believed him capable of discernment.

Still, his father had trusted him at the forge.

 

(When he holds aloft that first barrel, it is perfect; the thickness even and the curvature smooth. He flattens it, and starts anew.)

 

There is, as yet, no plan. As the first week at the smithy draws to a close, Maedhros is more a heap of raw-ended nerves than a man with any idea of vengeance.

“This is what I mean,” Gwindor says on their last night. “You can’t live or think straight with that leg.”

“Certainly can’t walk straight,” Maedhros agrees dryly.

Gwindor snorts. “I mean it, Red. First order of business ought to be finding you a little relief.”

Maedhros is twisting his fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. It is just beginning to curl.

“Bauglir doesn’t want me to have relief,” he says. “So I shan’t.” This feels like an old argument.

He thinks, dully, of all Morgoth’s small torments. The cords drawn so tightly that his hands went cold and numb. The horrid curios and creatures he delighted in.

The dart, pressed softly beneath the curve of his eye.

Morgoth desires his pain, for it is the constant and consuming reminder of what Maedhros has become. Maedhros’s fingers, slipping, brush against the ridged edge of Mairon’s eye.

“I must manage as best I can,” he tells Gwindor, digging his nails into his palms.

“I’ll steal you some drink.”

“Too risky.” He feels almost as if the pain in his leg has a color: searing, throbbing white amid a cloud of blood-dark bruise.

Gwindor groans. “You’re hopeless.”

Maglor used to say so, too. He misses Maglor, allows this for a moment long enough that he forgets one pain in favor for another. But it does not last; his flesh is always weak.

He returns to hear Gwindor saying, “At least let Belle see to it, tomorrow if we can. She knows more’n I do.”

 

The compound is like a different land when they return. Maedhros did not believe he knew it well until he felt it change. There is an eerie calm over the whole place; no thralls. Some of the overseers are lounging or standing about, looking disgruntled. Gothmog is nowhere to be seen.

Harris dismounts from his perch and leaves them to fend for themselves. Gwindor climbs down out of the cart and turns.

Maedhros knows they are being watched. The overseers saw Gwindor save his life; they can see no more. He shakes his head tightly.

Gwindor scowls but stands back.

How many times has he seen the world explode in a mockery of stars? He remembers the first plunges of the branding iron, before he fainted, before that beloved voice surged up with its sweet promise of death. He remembers when Mairon set his pincers around the offered tooth and  _pulled_.

Maedhros blinks and blinks until he can see again. His hands are planted on the ground—he must have fallen—and his arms are shaking badly.

“Damnation,” Harris mutters. “Help him up, Soldier. Make yourself useful, why don’t you.”

Gwindor is there at once, his hands firm under Maedhros’s shoulders. “Come on now, Russandol,” he breathes, in his quietest whisper. “Are you satisfied? Alright now, alright. I have you.”

Gwindor has a bad shoulder, injured long ago and never healed. Maedhros does not want to lean on it, but he cannot remember which one it is. He is overcome, anyway, and Gwindor does not complain under his weight.

When they reach the barracks, they find them deserted. Of course. Every man, woman and child is attending to their work. Gwindor is sent to join the others, and Maedhros watches him disappear. He sags against the doorway and realizes how much he is still afraid.

“Git on,” says Goodley, appearing seemingly from nowhere. “Stables.”

It is a weary march. Goodley is impatient, and his cane is in his hand, but he does not strike. Maedhros winces his way past the whipping posts, past the path to the guardhouse, each step tender and uncertain.

 

The horses, at least, are kind to him. They shudder under his awkward brushing (he used to think nothing of this task; it was a pleasure, a rare moment of quiet at home). They nibble him with velvet mouths, and once, he buries his face in the rough comfort of a mane.

“Russandol?”

He startles badly and catches himself on the half-wall of a stall.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Belle says desperately, still hardly above a whisper. She grimaces; more than usual. “I thought—”

 _Of course_. Maedhros tightens his grip to steady himself, and remembers. When Belle last saw Gwindor, they neither of them knew whether Maedhros was even alive.

_And they care._

“Gwindor and I were sent to the forge,” he explains. “We are returned for only a week.”

Belle does not ask further questions on that score. “Your leg,” she murmurs. “Gwindor told me.”

“It is getting better.” He wants to lie to her, about this. He does not know why.

“It scarcely looks it.” But she does not move, does not try to inspect it. He suddenly recognizes something, like looking in a mirror. She is hurt.

And what is she doing in the compound, alone at midday?

He inches forward, supporting himself on the partition. “Belle, is anything amiss?”

“Nothing.” But she turns away, and where her right hand is balled against her leg, a dark crust of blood peeks though her knuckles.

“Your hand,” Maedhros says, sickened. He has always been afraid that they will do something to his hands—something more than the nail torn away. It is just beginning to properly grow in, but it is growing. It is…salvageable. “What is wrong with your hand?”

“It does not matter.”

“It does.” She is close enough that he can reach out and take her by the wrist, which he does. Belle gasps a little, but she lets him turn over her palm.

It is slashed and swollen, laced with dark welts still oozing blood.

“Fuck,” Maedhros says, despite himself. His heartrate climbs, his body putting together pieces before his mind does. “And the other?”

Belle nods. “It’s alright, though. I’ll manage.”

It’s the same lie.

“But why…”

“I—” Belle tugs her wrist away, and he lets her go. “I came here to clean and bind them. Brine or vinegar or…”

“Let me,” Maedhros urges. It is a distraction, and more than that, he knows he is to blame, somehow. He steps around the edge of the stall, but Belle is shaking her head.

“We can’t be seen together,” she says, and runs.

 

The day is long. As long as a day in the forge, though he is not watched so closely here, and can rest his leg a little more often. Until they send him back to the fields, that is. He does not know when that will be.

He cannot stop thinking of Belle, however. He thinks of the comb he turned over to Morgoth, a sign of truce, and wonders if somehow Gothmog—

It would be like Gothmog, to make her bleed. Maedhros cannot bring himself to be grateful that it was only her hands; what will it be tomorrow?

He is impatient for Gwindor’s return. The sun creeps down the sky early; it is autumn. Not yet November—and there, he is thinking of Maglor again.

A year ago, they were nearing Beleriand.

Under cover of the supper line, Maedhros tugs at Gwindor’s sleeve.

“Thought you didn’t want to be seen with me, lad.” Gwindor reaches for a piece of bread.

“Belle’s hurt.”

“Aye, I spoke to her.”

“What happened?”

“Have a little patience. Sticks is helping her.” Then Gwindor moves on down the line.

Maedhros misses his days in the women’s quarters, though he cannot say so. He keeps his head down, sobered by Gwindor’s careful calm, and nearly collides with Lem.

The big man says nothing. His face is flat and set, but one side of it is puffed and purple. His eyes travel down to the splint on Maedhros’s leg, and then, still silent, he shoulders past.

Maedhros sees the criss-cross of dried blood that stiffens the back of Lem’s shirt.

“Jesus, Red, I leave you alone for a minute,” Gwindor mutters in his ear. His arms slips through Maedhros’s, and lost in the crowd, they head back to barracks.

 

At least he is not chained here, to sleep. The sound of the men breathing makes him itch, makes him wild. There are too many of them. Away from the forge, he thinks of Mairon, more than ever. What would be different, if Maedhros had only killed him in the woods? If Rumil had not promised to carry that letter—

(If Feanor had never gone west.)

Maedhros digs at the edge of the splint with one finger. The discomfort is all the greater, even where his leg is unhurt, because the plates are hard-edged and drawn too tight. He will not tell Gwindor how bad it is, but nor can he deny that he imagined the relief of Belle’s capable hands setting it right again.

But she is no doctor, at the best of times, and these are not the best of times.

Meadhros does not sleep. Sometime after midnight, Gwindor stirs awake. In a whisper, he says, “He’s been questioning her. Thinks some of the women are helping you.”

_You put her in danger. You should have known, he has eyes everywhere._

“And her hands?”

“He took a switch to them when she wouldn’t answer. She told me to tell you it isn’t so bad. I told her that you must have learned lying at the same school. But don’t worry, Russandol. Belle’s been through worse than this.”

“That doesn’t—” Maedhros moves restlessly, and bites back his groan. “Doesn’t make the pain any easier.”

“Well, then. You still won’t let me see to your leg?”

He doesn’t want it touched. There is that animal instinct, the desire to go somewhere dark and quiet to die. Celegorm explained this in deliberate detail, after he had finally accepted it himself.

_They just want to be alone, hiding. So no one can see them. Maybe it makes them feel safe._

“It’s in a bad way,” Maedhros admits. “But it’s best to leave it alone.”

“Speaking of, did Lem leave you alone?”

“Aye.”

Gwindor was already whispering so low that the men in the bunks beyond would not be able to hear them, but now he hardly breathes the next words:

“He should die for what he did.”

“No,” Maedhros answers, just as quietly. “Let it go.”

_He was your friend._

“He was punished,” Maedhros adds, after a moment. “That means he…he failed at something. Don’t you understand?”

Gwindor’s face, in the faded moonlight, suggests he does.

Maedhros does not want Lem to die. Does not want to see him again, either, for the sight of him makes the jarring memory of his attack flood back with a vengeance—

But there are worse nightmares, and he has all of them.

Lem’s stripes mean that Gothmog was angry with him.

They also mean that Gothmog is not exactly keeping his word.

 

“Talk to him today,” Maedhros urges, before Gwindor leaves him.

Gwindor looks stormy. Maedhros summons up his most pleading expression—one he has not used since he was with his brothers, and Gwindor swears at him.

“Christ, lay off.” He stumps away, still muttering. Maedhros would smile, if he could.

 

The next day finds him on washing duty. He had hoped to see Sticks, but she must be in the fields. The other brats do not know him so well as the little ones—they are older. They are skittish around the scarecrow ghost in their midst.

Maedhros is beginning to fear infection; to fear death again. He told Gwindor only that he did not want to die, and that Morgoth would not let him.

_Why do you worry, then?_

He has no sensible answer for that.

 

Goodley finds him there, when the tin plates and pots from morning are finished, and the swirling water is grey. Maedhros stands at hunch-shouldered attention.

He keeps thinking how Gothmog did not really keep his word.

Goodley must see his fear. He smiles his thin, calm smile.

“We aren’t allowed to ruin you,” Goodley says, “But it ain’t a stretch to say you’re already ruined. And what can you do? All your masters are gone away.”

He takes a step forward. Maedhros keeps quite still. He does not look Goodley in the eye; that is a challenge to men as well as dogs.

(He used to look Morgoth in the eye.)

_Breathe, Maitimo._

(But that is Morgoth’s voice.)

Goodley seizes him by the hair, and twists his head back.

“Bitten on the throat, were you?” he whispers, eyes skating down over Maedhros’s jaw. “We heard a tale or two about that.” Then Goodley gnashes his teeth, breathing hot near the scarred skin, and laughs soundlessly.

Maedhros shuts his eyes, suppressing his shudder as best he can. She is far away now, dead. He does not think much of that shame anymore. Her touch and his, her mirth and his desperation...they mean nothing, when viewed through the cold prism of the present. But the scar on his neck makes him think of Maglor, who saved him then. Who did not save him the second time Thuringwethil had him in her hands.

“We buried Larsen in the same pit as the brat,” Goodley grits out, dragging Maedhros back to the present. His hand, still, is knotted against Maedhros’s tender scalp. “He deserved more than that. If it had been me with the lash in hand, you wouldn’t have any flesh left on your rotten bones. You’d have died there.” He pauses, and despite the mockery, despite the thin smile, Maedhros knows he is angry. “You can give anything to anyone, I suppose. You ought to give us satisfaction.”

(The foolish boy, desired and despairing. Tasting her mouth because he thought he had to, tasting her poison because he was tired and sick at heart.

Leaving his brothers alone in the dark room, before he was certain they were sleeping.

Believing that the aid of Jem and Galway would be enough.)

(Trying to comfort Belle, who suffered anew for him.)

Maedhros hates what he has always been.

Goodley casts his eye about, as if searching, until he finds something that pleases him. Maedhros can guess what it will be even before Goodley nudges him towards the wash-pans. Forces him down—by the hair, yes, but also by a knee to the back of his bad leg.

“Drink, filth,” Goodley orders, softly, as Maedhros gasps. “Drink. It ain’t going to ruin you.”

He wants to kill this man, and he wants to kill himself, but not yet. Maedhros is angrier than he was when the pain was first visited upon him. He is also just as afraid.

He rattles through the usual calculation—how much will they hurt him, and how much chance does he have?

He knows the water will not kill him. He knows that Larsen, like all the rest, is dead because of him.

Yet, he presses his lips firmly together.

“Drink, you base bastard.”

“Steady there,” Knox says, coming in.

“Red’s alright,” Goodley says, releasing Maedhros with vicious quickness. “Aren’t you, Red?”

He catches himself on the edge of the table. He pants.

“I’ll take him to the field with me,” Knox says, settling his hat more firmly on his head. “We traded that corn with those Indians. Brats is husking and drying it.”

“The ones Harris and them went back and shot?”

“Aye.”

“Git on then.” Goodley is smoothly expressionless again. “Run along after him, Red, and go thirsty.”

Maedhros sets one foot carefully in front of another. In his mind, Goodley can no longer so much as scream.

Knox leads the way up the hill. He goes rather slowly, but Maedhros knows better than to believe him merciful.

 _Breathe, Maitimo._  
  
Did Goodley care for Larsen? They were still men, after all. Still had flesh and blood hearts. Maedhros supposes that he and his brothers were monsters, to the dead and dying at Ulmo’s Bridge.

_Oh, you are thinking of the past today._

_Because I must find the future._  


“Russandol!” Sticks seeks him out in the shade, where Knox allowed him to stray. He is at awkward angles on the ground, but husking corn is an easy enough task, and the sight of the girl brightens even the sunshine itself.

“Keep your voice down, bairn.”

“Bairn?” She picks up an ear of corn, wrinkles her nose.

Maedhros feels the blood rising in his cheeks. “Just a Scotch word. Nevermind.”

“I do not know Scotch. But—” and Sticks draws herself up—“ _Ich leibe meine Mutter_. That is German,” she adds modestly.

“I understand it a little,” Maedhros adds, very quietly, in the same tongue. More memories. After all this time, and all this horror, he still feels his heart seize in his chest.

Sticks is delighted. The nearby brush, rustling in the opposite direction of the breeze, suggests that Frog is as well. Sticks gathers a generous allotment of the corn and begins to husk it ably. “Belle can teach you Portuguese,” she says. “Lots of words, there.”

Belle is from somewhere else. A woman with a language; a story.

Maedhros thinks of her poor face, her poor hands.

_He took a switch to them, when she wouldn’t—_

_You must wonder what I am going to do first._

_Did Mairon hurt you? I do not mean what was done in the forge..._

They work until the sun goes down. Gwindor sees him as they trek back to the compound, manages to walk beside him.

“You look a sight, Russandol.”

“Sure, and you’ve a nice sunburn coming on as well.”

“Bastard.”

Maedhros lets his elbow be taken. His own burn has peeled in horrid strips and flakes, from his shoulders and arms and neck most of all. The scabs on his back itch, too, though the deep bruising beneath is still a constant ache. Some of Gothmog’s blows were heavy, and Goodley beat him harshly, before that.

“Belle,” he says, under cover of the dinner rush. “Did you speak to her today?”

Gwindor shakes his head. “Didn’t see her about. Keep away if she told you to; no doubt there’s a reason.”

This is no comfort.

It is, however, enough to acknowledge that Maedhros has more of a plan than he has let himself admit.

 

By the time they depart for the smithy at the end of the week, Belle has passed a few messages through the brats. She has bruises on her throat and cheeks, and she moves carefully, but she swears that she is well enough.

“The storm is almost past,” Sticks conveys, very solemn.

Maedhros wishes he could believe her. But again, it is the same lie.

 

“We must save them,” Maedhros says to Gwindor, through the dark of the forge.

“By wreaking vengeance, and dying in a blaze? That’ll harm more than hurt.”

“There are...” Maedhros cannot speak of his brothers here, not even to Gwindor. “I did not mean to strike a blow only for myself.”

“You never do anything for yourself.”

If Gwindor only knew.

“I was a whore,” Maedhros says, almost snappishly, “for myself.”  _And a drunkard, and a coward, and a promise-breaker._

“By definition, that ain’t possible.”

Maedhros recedes into silence.

“Told you not to carry it all, Red,” Gwindor huffs, rattling his chain. “So, you want to cause ‘em hurt?”

“Enough of a wound to let them through,” Maedhros answers. “Belle and the children, the women and you and—and all of them, Gwindor. We have to free all of them.”

“You think in all my time we’ve never thought up a scheme like that?”

“I don’t know,” Maedhros says, truthfully. “Have you?”

Gwindor coughs. “Damn, you put me to shame.”

“What do you mean?” His head is swimming, as it does at night, when the day’s pain has thickened to a dense violet blur. Did he say something amiss? (He cannot see Gwindor’s gruff near-smiles, at this hour.)

“You’ve been here scarce two months, been beaten to hell and back, and you want to stage a daring rescue. Half of those men mistreated you, lad. Lem. The others. You don’t owe them—”

“You don’t know what I owe.”

(This time, it is Feanor’s voice.)

“Maybe I don’t. But you’re young, yet, and the monsters are old. Oh, I have a thousand questions I won’t ask. You know I do. But mostly—how’ll we  _do_  it?”

“Here,” Maedhros says. He runs his hand through his hair, then brings his fingers to brush his lips. Dry, bitten. That, at least, is the same.

(He was always a foolish boy, and Feanor did what he could with the pretty little slip of a son whose worship did not foreclose the possibility of betrayal.)

“We’ll do it here.”

 

Maedhros finishes the gun on a day when the air is bright and cool at noon. Maeglin, the slim, dark-haired creature whose gaze is both curious and cynical, comes to admire it.

“Why is it so small?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

“The bullets are smaller than those of an ordinary gun,” Maedhros answers. He wishes he could offer a warm invitation for the boy to come close. To see what he had done, and to teach him its making. “They are also hollow, so they cause more damage.”

Of course, he can do none of this; can say no more than he already has.

Also, he is somehow afraid of this boy.

(He was afraid of Curufin, too. The scarlet fever child who loved Feanor with white heat. Who hit and clawed and sunk his teeth into any other hand that tried to help him, Maedhros’s most of all.

Maedhros will not see his brothers again. He can admit, now when they frightened him.)

 

“You won’t be able to run on that leg.”

“We have time,” Maedhros whispers, prodding a fingertip against the stiff swelling until tears well in his eyes. “We have time, Gwindor.”

(He is lying again.)

 

He dreams of the day he saw the mountain blown out, when he and Celegorm rode abroad with men from both companies. He does not dream, now, of the unease that dwelt in him: that feeling, realized in bitter depth, has no meaning beyond the future it wrote.

Instead, he is sitting at Maglor’s feet again, his head resting against Maglor’s knee.

Maglor’s hands are gentle in his hair. The touch is good, kind in a way that Maedhros has forgotten by day.

In another moment, though, he realizes that Maglor is cutting lock after lock, spreading them like ribbons on the sleeve of Maedhros’s old coat.

“Don’t,” Maedhros begs, choked. “Please. It has just grown long again.”

Maglor lays another tress to its full red length, and says, in a cold flat voice, “Take him away, and bury him.”

 

“You were screaming, lad,” Gwindor says, his hand hot on Maedhros’s forehead. Gwindor has stretched his legs to come this close. The tables to which they are chained are just near enough that they can reach each other, with effort. “What is it?”

Maedhros bites his tongue and squeezes his eyes shut. Gwindor releases him.

 

The gun is finished, and Maedhros knows—knows as only Feanor’s son can know—that it is good, even though he has not fired it. He has not fired a gun in all his time in Angband. He has not, since his bullets went astray in spring rain.

Morgoth arrives at the mouth of the smithy in his usual soft blacks. Maedhros is leaning over the bench, sorting scraps, and he raises his eyes to the realization that he is already being watched. Morgoth, unexpectedly, does not smile when he sees him. He turns his face away and paces through the web of pathways, to where all the men (and Maeglin) stand by.

He asks, “How goes the work?”

What answer to that can there be? The men are few enough that they can hardly be expected to furnish the whole railroad with metal; Maedhros has suspected for some time now that there are other smithies and suppliers, farther from Morgoth’s watchful eye. That can only mean that this is where the ideas begin, so that  _he_  may oversee them.

His eyes stray to the gun on the bench.

The repairman answers Morgoth’s questions, and Maeglin practically hops from one foot to the other, twisting his long-fingered hands together. Maedhros’s throat is tight. The boy must be careful—must not be too nervy, too eager, too  _longing_.

Morgoth smiles at the boy.

Maedhros gasps.

“Hello, sir,” Maeglin says.

“Hello, my lad. What have you been doing?”

Maedhros turns, hypnotized, to watch their progress. His leg drags as he does so, the edge of the splint striking the table. He bites his lip, hard.

“What clever little creations,” Morgoth says, folding his hands behind his back, palm to palm, and stooping obligingly over Maeglin’s little corner. “Why, this would do nicely to fit inside an umbrella or a hollow cane. I saw such things in the east—I have a few myself. If the west becomes as genteel, we may have a chance at turning a profit.”

Sometimes, Maedhros thinks Morgoth is a fool.

“And now for the winged sparrow,” Morgoth says, without turning his head. “How fares _its_  work? How fares its duties?”

Maedhros’s pulse pounds in his ears. He looks at Maeglin, who gives him a Curufin-sour scowl. Maedhros does not look at Morgoth, but Morgoth is finally looking at him.

There is an interminable pause, during which Morgoth treads firmly across the expanse between them, past the benches where the finished stakes cool.

“Speak to me, with your broken bird-voice,” he says, very quietly, when he stands across the work bench. “What have you made for me?”

Maedhros answers, “I have made you a gun.”

He sees the long hand coming. He knows it will touch him before it does. It grasps him firmly under his dipped chin and lifts his face up, up.

“The bruises are healing,” Morgoth tells him, pleased. “Now, reassure me. Is it your father’s gun?”

“It is.”

“Very good, my sparrow. Let us see you become an eagle, again.” He laughs, low, and then raises his voice. “All of you, come out. Come out into the clear.”

 

Here is the forest, browed in shadow. Here are the guards, gazing needle-sharp and careful.

Here is Gwindor, standing with his axe against his leg.

 _Not here, not here_. Maedhros looks at the gun in Morgoth’s hand, looks at the cleared earth around them. He takes one jerky step forward, following the monster.

Morgoth hangs back.

“I am forgetful,” Morgoth says, “Of your pain.” He turns to Murphy, and says, “Are these all those stationed here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” Morgoth wets his lips with his pale tongue. The day is summer-warm, even outside the forge. Maedhros finds himself wondering if Morgoth came while he hung senseless between Gothmog’s posts. If Morgoth withstood  _that_  burning heat with the same slithering aplomb he does now, all to see one more drop of blood spill down.

He should have asked Gwindor further questions, about that day. Gwindor might not have answered, to be sure, but Gwindor is also honest with him, and…

His eyes are drawn to the axe at Gwindor’s feet, briefly. He does not look his friend in the eyes.

His—

_Not here._

“Come,” Morgoth says again, and it is the edge in his voice that wakes Maedhros’s shivering pulse, jarring his ears and throat as well as his leg. The edge means that Morgoth is repeating himself.

Maedhros looks at his stiff high collar, and his waistcoat, and the silver watch-chain glittering there. He moves forward, and grimaces as he does so.

It is both what he feels, and what he hopes will make Morgoth revert to gloating pity rather than rage.

“You have taken to your surroundings well,” Morgoth tells him, turning the gun over and over in his hand. “You were given as a gift, and kept as something else. Now you have shown me that you may be useful again.”

Not a sound from the men watching, not even Murphy. No guffaws, no muttered insults. They are frozen in amber, uncertain, because Morgoth does not  _belong_  here, any more than he belonged in Maedhros’s cold cell, offering warmth.

_He did not belong in Formenos, either, but somehow, you let him in._

Half his life ago.

“Someone hurt you,” Morgoth observes, pursing his lips. “Hurt you so badly that you may never walk upright again. Even a racing horse must be killed over a broken leg, you know.” He cranes his neck to glance at the huddle of forge-workers, who do not quite maintain the sullen composure of the guards. “How have you admired him, my good men? How have you admired the work of a criminal? I would understand, of course, if you did. He was the son of a craftsman, you know. A very fine craftsman, who gifted me also this silver chain.” Morgoth presses his finger against the eye of the barrel. “Give me a bullet, lad. I know you have some in your hand.”

Maedhros gives him a bullet. He is not trembling. He is not remembering.

He must not.

_Why did you…_

_Because if he had had to take it by force, he would be angry, now._

“The life of a brigand is necessarily hard,” Morgoth opines. He fits the bullet into the chamber of the gun, prodding it with long, thick finger. “Our horse, our dog, whatever you may call him—and however you may treat him, has had to learn the law’s lessons by whip or by way.”

Morgoth smiles at his own jest.

Maedhros looks at Maeglin, which is a mistake, for the boy is pale and proud and hating him fiercely, and that, he finds, he cannot bear.

 

_Do you know why I named you Michael, also?_

_I want your company._

_The points of this star are for each of us, with your mother at our heart. Is it to your liking? It is the finest of its kind…_

“If you will not be a ruined steed or beaten dog, you shall still be mine.” Morgoth speaks quietly again. “Flightless. Skilled. Mine. Tell me, Maitimo. Who hurt you?”

 “I do not know.” Maedhros has no bullets, no weapons left.

Morgoth feigns surprise. “A lie? After all that was taken from you, we left the lies within?”

The breeze is stirring his hair. Can the men hear what is said? Can Gwindor hear?

_The trigger quickness of—_

“He caught me from behind,” Maedhros answers, blinking steadily. He will not betray his fear in this moment. He used to lie to everyone he loved. Can he not lie to Melkor Bauglir? God, but the sun is hot on his neck.

God, but he is so close to shivering.

“Caught you from behind?”

“I was going to relieve myself. He must have come in through the far door of the barracks, and up behind me as I made my way out the front. He…”

Lem cannot die by his word. It would not be strictly  _unjust_ , to tell the truth—or maybe it would, but he does not care much for justice. He only knows that he cannot bear to have the blood of one of Gwindor’s people on his hands, even one rightly rejected. Maedhros has lived as a coward, and killed as a coward, but it is not time for him to die.

Him, or anyone else.

_Anyone._

“Lies again, I deem. You are so charming, still, when your lips tremble like that. You hold back the truth as if it would hurt you. Whom would it hurt, Maitimo? You are already a cripple.”

The brothers who work side-by-side in the smithy are named Anders and Jacob, and the thin repairman is called Elias. Maedhros knows that they look at him with fear and scorn, though he is uncertain about Maeglin. The boy’s moods are more fickle, but all in all, they are not allies. Not comrades. They eat with Murphy and the other guards. They take their pay and keep their silence.

And now they must watch him hand over his father’s work, willingly, into the hands of a man who has only ever hurt him. They must watch him lie.

(He could have killed Morgoth, here and now, but what would it have done? Led to his death, and Gwindor’s death, likely. He is too injured to fight. He would have had time for one bullet. Maybe two.

_Kill him, and then yourself._

But Gothmog killed—and Mairon—)

( _Anyone. It is not time for anyone to die._ )

Maedhros says, with calm he does not feel, calm his father did not give him, “I do not know, sir. Please believe me.”

“Ah, very well,” Morgoth says, with a laugh that is half a sigh, and shoots Elias in the throat.

 

“Russandol, I’m begging you. Tell me something, lad, that I can know you’re not choking to death.”

Maedhros, it seems, was not muffling his sobs in his sleeve as well as he thought. He squeezes his eyes shut until sparks flare up behind them, and then, thickly, he whispers.

“I’m alright.”

“I’ll do what Belle told me to do,” Gwindor says, gruff, as if he is embarrassed. “And give you my hand, if you like.”

Maedhros spills out of his tightly curled position, sprawling bonelessly on the cool stone. He does not even breathe for a moment, before he says. “He could have— _you_.”

 _You. He could have killed you, if he had known what you mean to me, he_ would _have killed you. I put the gun into his hand, and the bullets into his hand, and I lied to save Lem and you—_ you _—_

“Take my hand.” Gwindor’s voice is thick now, too.

 

 _My, my, but this is spectacular!_  Morgoth exclaims, with giddy, parlor-party cheer. The spray of blood did not reach him; his face is unmarked. The scars are still under his eye; but that is only a mockery. He takes one step, and another, around Elias’s retching body.

He lifts the gun to Maedhros’s set face.

Terror can come by sunlight, too. It is not only after dark and out of doors. Maedhros does not move.

Morgoth strokes the side of the gun, still blistering with heat, down the curve of Maedhros’s cheek.

 _I thank you for your labors, my eagle_ , Morgoth murmurs. Then he lowers the weapon—Feanor’s weapon—and turns to Maeglin.

If the boy is pale, or frightened, Maedhros does not see. He is shaking from head to toe, and he knows it.

 _You shall help him, my dear,_  Morgoth says, throwing an arm around Maeglin’s scrawny shoulders.  _A hundred of these guns. We shall civilize the west, like this._

(He orders Gwindor to bury the body.)

 

“No,” Maedhros whispers, curling and uncurling his fingers. “I—I can’t. I’m sorry.” 


	18. in peril or broken forever

_It was terrible to witness_ , his father said. _It broke his whole body and made it anew._

The boy shuddered.

His father finished the story, savoring each word as if he knew them well. _They called the battle-frenzy of Cu Chulainn the ‘ríastrad.’_

“I can do it, this time,” Maeglin offers eagerly. He has a boy’s face and something other than a boy’s eyes. Maedhros nods.

“Mind you don’t over-pour the barrel.”

He half expects the boy to fling molten metal at him, in a fit of rage at being given guidance by a nameless slave. Half expects to find a knife rather than a gun fashioned, one of these days, and thrust in his back.

But if Maeglin is quietly resentful in spirit and quick to learn at his trade, Maedhros must trust to this. He cannot let his own answer be fear. In his time before death, but after he deserved to be still living, he indulged fear as a man might indulge (as he himself might have, once) in sweet wine.

Held captive, Maedhros, ever desirous of others’ pity— _a failing all his own, for no parent or brother shared it_ —allowed weakness before war.

If there is to be war (and there is), there can be no more friendship, no more favors.

_You let them break your heart. It cannot guide you._

Here is the trouble: he has an ally, whose loss would ruin him. He has, in a mockery of all his unlearned lessons, a _friend_.

So: he puts his heart aside.

Gwindor understands; or, if he does not, he makes no argument. Demands no explanation for why Maedhros no longer speaks much outside of the day’s work and the night’s planning.

“There are scraps enough,” Maedhros whispers, in the dark, “For one.”

 

One gun. He is sparing with his movements, casual in his configuration of doubles. Maeglin never asks that fateful question— _why_ —when it comes to the occasional duplication of Maedhros’s efforts.

_That does not mean he cannot find you out._

 

The count of seasons was taken from him, but he thinks the year is nearing its close. It was late in May when he was taken; late in summer when Morgoth cast him out. He thinks it is November now. November, Maglor’s birth month. If Maglor still lives, and he must, he will be twenty-three. As old as Maedhros was when they set out from Formenos—and as young.

He has tried to be strong, but such thoughts rock him from head to laden foot. Maglor, the baby born so close in time to Maedhros that Maedhros can scarcely remember life without him. There are one or two shadowy memories of swinging from his father’s hand, while his mother’s belly was curved almost to bursting—

“Hold,” Maeglin cries. “You nearly hammered through your finger.”

Maedhros startles, stares at him, his breath shuddering in his chest like a living thing. A separate living thing from his own wracked and weary self. “I—”

“What were you thinking of?” Maeglin asks, wiping the back of his sleeve across his nose. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Are the words sharp, or do they only fall sharply?

“I was distracted,” Maedhros answers. “Here, this cylinder has rendered a little uneven. Let us try it again.”

“Us,” Maeglin says sourly. “Yes, let _us_.”

 

“I don’t trust that little mongrel,” Gwindor announces, that night. He is sitting up in the dark, fumbling for something at his belt. “Here. Brought you quail bush leaves. They’re all along the creek bed.”

Maedhros says, rather than discussing Maeglin, “The creek?”

“Runs through the forest, yes. Likely joins up with a bigger river. Eat ‘em all, lad. Don’t want you suffering for vegetables.”

Maedhros chews the offered leaves. They have a slight salt flavor, and he is reminded of the lush dense sorrel and fierce wild peppermint that grew in the east. “We could use that river,” he says softly. “Leave no tracks.”

“Aye.”

“Can you map it?”

“I think so. That Murphy lout follows me, but he ain’t thoughtful.”

“He really is a lout. Now, you’ve never seen a dog about, have you?”

Gwindor scoffs. “No. Surprising, that. They’d do much to keep us slaves in line.”

“Count it a blessing,” Maedhros says wryly. “Right, next. When we’re turned back to Gothmog, you have to decide on your point man.” He pauses, then adds. “You’re sure it can’t be Lem?”

“Say what you like, Red, but I’ll not put my faith in him.”

“He doesn’t care for _me_ ,” Maedhros answers. He swallows the leaves. “An understandable impulse. But I won’t be the one meeting him, will I?”

“No.” Gwindor practically grumbles _that_.

“Think on it,” Maedhros says. “The first half of the batch will be ready in another fortnight, if I’m any good at counting. That means just one more week there, and one more here. Depending on the truth of what you heard from Murphy, they’ll send up all the overseers to collect.”

“The ‘seers and the mountain guards,” Gwindor agrees. “That would be closer to fifty.”

“Well, then.” Maedhros lowers himself down on his back. It itches more than it hurts now, as the scabs shed. “That’s our chance, and when I’ve done my bit up this way, you’ve got to be ready to race down—horse or no horse. And Gwindor, _someone_ has to be ready to meet you. I still think Lem’s your man.”

“It’s tricky,” Gwindor says, stubbornly leaving the matter of Lem unresolved. “Those folk are used to being herded like cattle, but their usual masters will be gone.”

“All the more reason that they’ll answer to you.” (Maedhros has to believe this.) “If you can put enough distance between you and the camp—connect to that river, if you can, and cross it—”

“I know, I know. But I’ve a more pressing question, Red. How will you join us?”

_I won’t._

The thralls freed—the camp in shambles—a couple score of Morgoth’s men, dead—

_You will have made enough of a wound for it to at last be mortal._

_If I die how he died, does that honor him?_

A voice, not quite his own: _do you want to honor him?_

_I don’t want honor. I never really did._

“Don’t forget about Gothmog,” Maedhros says, after he has feinted an excuse just convincing enough to turn Gwindor’s focus back to the real matter at hand. “They likely won’t leave the compound wholly unattended, and I doubt he’ll come himself.”

“I’m not like to forget about old Snake Eyes. Set Lem to fight him, why don’t I? Take care of ‘em both.”

“He has a gun,” Maedhros says, as if they both don’t know. As if they both did not watch Larsen die, and Haldar die (with no gun required). As if they did not feel as well as see the barrel pressed to Gwindor’s skull.

Gothmog does not need a weapon to kill. (Gothmog killed Feanor without so much as breaking a sweat.)

Maedhros says, “Perhaps…”

“No, I know what you’re thinking, Red. You’ll need the one you’re making for yourself. Don’t so much as consider pulling this off, unarmed.”

“You know me too well,” Maedhros lies. “Perhaps fire here and fire there is the best solution. We’ve had dry weather, of late. If we’ve a moment to spare, this next week…”

“Drench the whole place in oil? Aye, surely they won’t notice.”

“Something.” Maedhros stifles a yawn. “Let me dream on it.”

“As if that’s what you dream of,” Gwindor mutters.

Maedhros tightens his jaw, and pretends to be already asleep.

 

In his newfound solitude of spirit, he sorts out pain from purpose. If he buys enough time, he will have to pay a great price, won’t he? Death feels near once more; feels possible.

(He has begun to dream of Fingon again.)

 

( _You’ve made me into something I never was,_ Fingon says sadly, and Maedhros, up to his lips in black water, answers,

_I didn’t call you here. This time, I didn’t call you._

_But I am here, nonetheless. Is that why you think I mean death?_

_I died in every other way already_ , Maedhros tells him. _What is left?_

The water closes silently over his head. It is no frenzy, that.)

 

Feanor’s guns rest light in the hand. Maeglin holds and cocks them as if he would let fly a bullet, but he never asks if he may test them himself.

 _Who are you?_ Maedhros does not ask (for it does not matter.) _Has he always treated you with a light touch? How long have you been his?_

If _he_ had done Morgoth’s bidding from the beginning, would he have ended in the same place, but in different form—making his weapons, but with an unscarred, unbent body?

 _You little fool_ , he tells himself, in Feanor’s voice, in Fingon’s voice, in his own voice. _You ruined yourself. You chose destruction, just as he said you did._

(Does it not feel like _your father’s hand_ —)

“How many is that?” Maeglin asks.

“Thirty,” Maedhros answers. Thirty, perfect and proud.

 

He and Gwindor are allowed to bathe, after supper, outside the entrance of the smithy. _Allowed_ is maybe too civilized a word. At least, they are not prevented; it is not exactly a prize. The barrel of water is fetid with other’s filth by the time it is theirs to use. Maedhros still finds some relief in scrubbing away the scorched scent of the day’s work. The forge’s familiarity cannot quite mask its fulfillment of both horror and home.

 _Pain has its uses_ , Feanor reminds him, for the thousandth time. Maedhros knows the truth of that almost too well; like everything else, like his dreams, it has been dulled by repetition.

A dull blade digs deepest, if driven by the right hand.

 He strips off his shirt in the twilight. Gwindor stands guard; Maedhros does not ask him to, but Gwindor does many things without being asked. The quail bush. The offered hand.

Maedhros washes, on the last day of their forge-week, and finds that the prickling names cut over his skin do not hurt any longer. True, the brands and beaten scars may never feel the same as other flesh, but at least they are sealed up.

He tries to forget the rest.

“I’ve been thinking on it, and Lem could do it,” Gwindor mutters, past his turned shoulder. Gwindor looks away, when the grisly lines of Maedhros’s many punishments are exposed. Even Gwindor, it seems, can feel disgust. _His_ scars are those of a man; not those of a miserable, tortured creature.

 _Death_ , Maedhros reminds himself—it is the one thing that shall never lose its poignancy, its point. “Do what?”

“Take Gothmog. Like I said.”

“He will die in the attempt, most likely.” He says this with the same hollow certainty that used to underlie his advice to his father, before they rode their raids.

“Then so be it.”

Maedhros tugs his shirt over his head. His leg twists in the splint as he does so, and he curses in a flare of white agony before he recovers enough to add, in proper English,  “You may have need of him later, you know.”

Gwindor spits on the russet earth.  “Need for a traitor?”

Maedhros is a traitor. He doesn’t know why Gwindor refuses to see that. “Grudges are a luxury.” As Feanor’s son, he speaks with some authority.

(Gwindor is not his father. Is not—anything—like his father.)

 “If he survives ‘Mog, I’ll forgive him.” Gwindor prods at his bad shoulder with two fingers. “Satisfied?”

“Satisfaction is not my game.”

“Christ, you’re a cocklebur tonight,” Gwindor says. “Ho, Murphy’s coming. Hurry up.”’

 

( _Russandol_ , Fingon whispers. _Is that the only name you answer to, now?_

 _Leave me_ , Maedhros says. He has no feeling in his extremities, in the core of his chest. Only in his lips, which bleed. Which twist and smile painfully, against his will. _Fingon, you know perfectly well that I can’t let you in._

Fingon is a white blur with eyes like two dark holes, burned through paper. Still himself, however. Still recognizable and anything but dull. _This is your dream. How else could I call you Russandol?_

Maedhros swallows his blood. _Should I find comfort here? I have to wake again, and live, a little longer. Come to me in death. Not before._

 _Russandol._ (Tenderly.) _You are smiling._

 _Yes. Because I know I am going to die._ )

 

Gothmog is waiting for them when they return to the compound, his stolen spurs dragging in the dust. He says nothing; keeps his arms folded over his barrel chest.

Maedhros does not stumble, this time, in his descent from the cart. He is growing stronger.

“Steady now,” Gwindor whispers. “We’re close.”

 

Before they set out, Gwindor said to him, “I can draw you a map.”

 

The late harvest is ready to be brought in. Maedhros and the women and children are tasked with rooting up carrots and radishes. The harvesting itself is not what troubles him; it is the long march to the field that makes him bitterly question the strength he had just counted as his own.

“Russandol, we can help you,” Sticks tells him, skipping up alongside. “Belle says we can help you.”

“I must do this alone,” Maedhros says. He cannot be harsh with Sticks, even now, but he also cannot converse easily with her, as he did before. To do so would be to open himself, in waking, to the kind of ruin death cannot abide.

_Attachment._

That has always been Maedhros’s crime.

He keeps his head down, and grinds his teeth against the agony of a bone healed wrong. Accordingly, he manages to drag himself along at the end of the line, while Knox half-pretends not to notice, out of pity or spite. By the time they reach the rows at last, Maedhros is a madman imprisoned by a corpse’s rigor. He slumps to his knees and claws his hands deep into the soil.

“Russandol,” Belle says, beside him.

Every time he has beaten himself to dull iron, she softens him again—if only by shame.

Has he missed her?

“You said we ought not to be seen together.” Maedhros does not look at her. “Knox is Gothmog’s man, Belle. He’s watching.”

“A moment, only,” Belle whispers. “I know I am a fool. But—your leg. Does it not heal at all?”

“It is healing.” He used to lie to Maglor and to others, about what he ate and how much he slept and whether he was drinking. He lied, then, because he hoped it meant they would not be troubled. He was wrong, but that lie is made truth, today.

He ought to cause Belle no further trouble.

“Russandol.” Her voice is ragged as always, but he can hear the new twist in it, as if by listening alone he follows an invisible web of strands to their knotted heart. “Look at me, just once.”

“What good will that do?” He tugs a particularly stubborn root free.

Belle does not answer.

Maedhros is weak, or curious, or simply exhausted. He looks at her. Meets her one dark eye, amidst her unmatched features. Watches and sees that she does not breathe.

Then she says, quickly and quietly, “Tell Gwindor that Lem is sorry. He can pass between us, perhaps. I don’t want to use Sticks any longer.”

There is a smudge of ugly bruising down the side of her face.

“I’ll tell him,” Maedhros says. “Is this what you wanted me to see?”

“No.” Belle shakes her head. “I wanted to see if you were lying, about your leg.”

 

He plays the words over in his mind in the hours that follow, even as he keeps a watchful eye on Gwindor at dinner, and sees, with satisfaction, that the man speaks a little to Lem. Conversation must be carefully guarded when Goodley and Harris are nearby, but in the moment they have, the former friends do not come to blows. That counts for something.

 _Something_ is all that Maedhros needs; reconciliation is not his business, not anymore. But if they are to have a plan that ends in life for those who deserve it, they will need leaders. Lem is selfish, and even cowardly: that is true, but not fatal. No one knows better than a coward does that such failings can be overcome for a great enough reward.

 _What, then, my serpent?_ Morgoth asks, as he always does when Maedhros’s spirit requires new punishment. _Was the reward never great enough for you? You failed your family for—_

Belle, with her twisted face and voice, and the softness of her single eye: _I wanted to see if you were lying._

He is always lying. Maedhros swallows the dry grey bread, the mealy potato mash. He snaps a raw carrot between his teeth last of all, out of habit.

If he is going to die here, he must be careful to remember that death is mercy.

 

When night falls, there has not been a spare moment to speak to Gwindor. There has been no free daylight by which to sketch a map. Maedhros runs a fingertip along the narrow bones on the back of his left hand. He lies facing skyward, his hands fanned over his breast, unclenching his teeth only with effort.

Gwindor takes up his post beside him, and in an undertone, says simply, “Lem’s in.”

 

 _Look behind you,_ Fingon warns. _Russandol, do not forget to look behind you._

 

In the battle-frenzy—

 

There is a new treaty, of sorts, on the second day. True, Lem is wary of Maedhros, and Gwindor is wary of Lem, and Maedhros is…

_Almost out of time._

When he was first marched up the cold black steps of Morgoth’s mountain keep, his father’s voice told him to find the mountain’s weaknesses. There _were_ weaknesses to be found—the buckling planks and the grinding joints, the snowing dust and the cracks in the walls—but Maedhros lost interest in the frailty of ill-tempered stone when he himself was ever in waiting for the next blow. Now, he tries to restore the trained precision of his former mind. There is much to be observed, in the pattern of Morgoth’s kingdom and Gothmog’s enterprise. This time, Feanor’s voice has little to do with it.

Feanor would tell him that he wasted precious days, before he was whipped and branded, before his bones were broken.

_Think, boy! Unbridled pain is the enemy of thought._

Yes, pain’s uses are not achievable by the weak.

Maedhros is always in pain, now, and thinks regardless. Almost out of time: the day comes soon. It comes when the guns are finished, and Maedhros has worked quickly this week past, with Maeglin’s help.

On the day, Gwindor must be free to slip back to the abandoned compound, and now (if Lem does as he is trusted to do), the men and women and children shall be ready to meet him. If they can kill Gothmog—or detain him—they can flee towards the forest. By doing so, by reaching the river, they will avoid both the remains of their guards (who, if Maedhros has done as _he_ is trusted to do, shall no longer be living), and the onward crawl of the railroad, where Morgoth’s paid laborers build without fear of Feanorians attacking by night.

Maedhros is not much of a Feanorian, now, despite the name scratched into his skin. If he permits thought beyond the skeletal structure of their reckless plot, he feels little resemblance to—

He cannot go back to the New York dandy, of course, softhearted sop that he was. Yet, even less is he the man who rode at a father’s side, strong enough to balance on a rope running west. The life of an acrobat is not a long one. He supposes he took his first crippling fall when Thuringwethil had her way with him, and his second when he knew not which way to lead or follow, as seven turned to six.

This shall be his living brothers’ chance: Morgoth’s forge, ruined; the guns, ruined; as many men dead as Maedhros can kill; the thralls set free.

 

He does not speak to Belle the next day, or the day after. She keeps away and passes messages through Lem: where straw-bales can be found, where pitch and tar can be not only found but also tipped over easily. Lem does not know all they have in store (nor does he know Maedhros’s part in it), but he understands how fleeting their chance is, how hard the hammer must fall.

Days pass like this; days in which maps are scratched in the dust of the quarters’ floor and blurred by the swipe of a palm at the next moment. Days in which Maedhros counts the overseers and imagines them burned and bleeding and lifeless.

(He feels searing pleasure, at these thoughts, as he has never felt before.)

Five days gone, and he holds back. Holds back the hatred and the greed for others’ suffering. Let him rather thirst for others’ freedom. Let him long for light.

 

_“He had no mastery over himself, when he was in his glory. He would wake in a daze, to find walls of corpses piled high.”_

 

The sixth day, and all is the same as it was, but for Belle. Belle is nowhere to be seen. Panic rises in Maehdros’s gullet. Panic can take many forms; it is rusted pliers closing around a tooth, for one, and the whistle of a lash through the air, seconds before it tears flesh, for another. But it is, most profoundly and eternally, the ache of missing the sight of another person.

Maedhros digs for vegetables until his hands are bruised. He cannot ask anyone where Belle is. If she is gone, she is gone.

_Let those who cursed me, curse me still._

In the place where his heart is, there is pain not like other pain.

 

“Lad,” Gwindor says, his face grave. “I need you to listen, calm and quiet.”

Maedhros half-glares at him, before remembering that they must only be allies, now. Not friends. Not—not anything close to _brothers_ , who feign vexation at another’s request. “What is it?”

“Gothmog’s taken Belle. Sticks says she saw her dragged off. We ain’t seen her, we—”

“You there,” Goodley says, stamping his cane against the packed earth of the yard. “Red. Master wants to see you.”

Maedhros rests one hand against the flat plane of the splint. He looks at the ground. He thinks, _meek, I must be meek_ , and he does not look at Gwindor. His heart pounds and his head swims and he should have _known_ that Gothmog would not stop with lacerating Belle’s hands, with bruising her face.

He keeps his head low and drags himself along after Goodley.

Goodley says, when they have taken ten paces, “I hope he thrashes the both of you.”

Maedhros makes no answer. No answer would be safe.

 

The guardhouse is enough yards away that he feels sweat standing out on his brow before Goodley swings the door open. He half-expects Goodley to shout something out, to announce their coming, but the front room is empty save for Gothmog, who is already expecting them.

To Maedhros’s surprise, Goodley does not stay. Wordlessly, he taps his heels together and shuts the door behind him on his way out. He must be afraid of Gothmog.

Gothmog has his hat on his knee, his pipe in his hand, and on the long table beside him, there is a half-finished plate of salt pork and potatoes. It is near midday.

“Smithy agrees with you. You ain’t so green.”

Maedhros is trapped in a particularly cunning web. Gothmog hates him, and does not have Morgoth’s fascination with him. Gothmog only lets him live by agreement, and that agreement is hanging by a thread.

_Where is Belle?_

“You pulled the wool, boy. It’s not often a man can, and if he’d done it fairly, I wouldn’t begrudge him. I wouldn’t.” Gothmog rolls his thick neck until it cracks. ‘But when a man ain’t acted fairly, he’s not a man at all, in’he?”

Maedhros lets his hands hang at his sides, the fingers loosely curled. To clench fists, to tilt his chin; these would be declarations of a war he cannot win.

“When a man ain’t a man, he’s a dog. A dog as has a bitch to help him.”

Maedhros’s tongue, bitten, salts his mouth with blood.

Gothmog heaves a sigh, deep in that barrel chest. He is not a man to grow tired. Maedhros knows that; his body knows it. Remembers only a few of the steady lashes, but is sure that they did not fade when he did.

“The comb,” Gothmog says. “You got that comb from somewhere, and made yourself a fine little pig-sticker.” He shrugs. “It’s not the pig-sticking I mind, so long as you keep to pigs. But no, she gave you something you could prove yourself with.”

Maedhros does not defend himself. Sometimes—because he is driven daily like a beast to slaughter—he forgets the Gothmog who took him first. Who washed the filth out of his hair and laid him at Morgoth’s feet. Who told him he would not die quickly. Who knew he would be useful without deciding what his use _was_.

“I caught your bitch,” Gothmog says. He gestures with a jerk of his thumb. “Have her trussed in the stow behind our larder, there. Funny choice, near the larder. She won’t be seeing light nor food, no, not so much as a lick of water.”

Maedhros no longer has any use. He is not beautiful; he is not strong. He is not Feanor’s son, in any way  that matters. They have already punished him for that.

Feanor was not Gothmog’s grudge.

Maedhros bears that, all alone.

He keeps his gaze trained on the man who killed his father and drove one brother, at least, to death. He does not look at the narrow door beside the larder shelves, though he can see it from the corner of his eye.

“She can tell me the truth,” Gothmog says. “Or you can.” There is a lengthening curl at the corners of his lips; a smile.

 _Speak, lest he grows tired._ The game changes, as it did when Maedhros spurned chance after chance. Maedhros says, “I have nothing to tell you, sir.”

“Then she’ll starve.” The small eyes, deep as gun-barrels, watch him closely. “And that would be a pity, for you to make her starve. You’re not in keeping with the terms of your own agreement, are you?”

This is a dare. Maedhros bites his tongue again.

“It’s a right dilemma,” Gothmog says. “You’ve made me talkative, because I’m sitting on my hands, with you. I’ll tell you a story you ought to know: she has no friends up the mountain. I chose my bitch better than you did, _Russandol._ ”

Belle is _there_ , behind that door. Hungry and hurting. Maedhros has known the twinges of starvation almost his whole life. How long has she—but it cannot have been long. He saw her each of the days before. It is now the sixth day of his week. On the morning of the eighth, he leaves.

“Aye, I can see you’re counting,” Gothmog says, satisfied. “You haven’t much time.”

Maedhros speaks with difficulty, since his mouth is so dry. “What is...what is this woman’s crime?”

Gothmog spits in what is likely meant to resemble surprise. “You won’t even give her the honor of a name?”

Maedhros grits his teeth and lies, “I do not know who she is.”

“Prettiest face you ever seen, “Gothmog muses. “Afore half of it was sliced up. It took me half a moment, Red. I thought even now, you could afford to have standards. Some women like a whore, you know, and if you were gussied up, you might not be so bad to look at...in the dark. But it was Belle who’s been helping you, isn’t it? Belle who’s made my life a sight harder, by goading Bauglir to poke his long nose in.”

“That was my doing.”

“And I’ll flay you for it yet, mark me. No use saving your hide now, as it concerns me.” Gothmog taps the bowl of his pipe on the table. “What a man doesn’t own wholly, he oughtn’t to keep. Do you understand?”

Maedhros does.

“You’re sweating, Red. I’m not. I don’t care if the ragdoll bitch starves. Better if she does. She’s too many friends in low places.”

Maedhros must not look at that closed door. Must not think of the woman shivering there, much like he used to, in the pitch-dark cell where Morgoth caressed him and Mairon tortured him anew.

Where, more than once, he tried to say goodbye.

 

_…he knew that he was dying. But he would not face his foes, nor any man, from the vantage of his knees._

Maedhros is not bidden to go. Silence falls. He sways a little. He knots his hands in the rough folds of his breeches, then looses them. He must not show—

“Do you remember the first favor I did ye, here?”

Maedhros’s tongue sits heavy in his mouth. “The mask, sir.”

Gothmog nods. “Aye, the mask. Bauglir would have had your tongue in ribbons by the end of that week if I'd made you abide it. He seems to want you useful, but doesn’t know when to stop you bleeding, does he? And _I_ saved you from that. Do you think it was out of kindness, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“Right again.” Gothmog leans forward, tilts his broad jaw up. “It was never about kindness, with me and you. Shot your mother in the arm and your father in the chest, I did. You were there, wailing, both times.”

Maedhros holds himself steady. He must.

(His mother and his father are already gone. Belle isn’t. Gwindor isn’t. The children—his brothers—)

“You’re in my way. Soon as he turned you onto me, soon as he put you in _my_ hands, you’ve been nothing but trouble. I gave you the shot I owed _him_. I offered you a chance to fall into line. And what did you do with it?”

“I failed.” Maedhros does not whisper. He speaks in the same mockery of his old, clear voice. How he manages this, he knows not.

“You failed. Every turn, you failed. I flogged you with my own hand, didn’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Devil take you. Was that not enough?”

Maedhros is not sorry. He must lie again. Fear is not the same as repentance.

Safekeeping is not the same as fear.

_Tell the lie you know._

“I am Bauglir’s,” he says. He does not wish to frighten Belle any more than she may already be frightened, but still he tunes his voice as hollow as he can, and keeps it as quiet as he can. “I must serve Bauglir.”

“And the poor lady set her cap at you despite that.” Gothmog shakes his head. “A bad business. She’s hurting for it, rolled like a pickled fish. Trouble is, I can’t hurt _you_.” He says the words as if he doesn’t believe them.

Maedhros breathes like the horses breathe. Whickering. Too loud.

“I’ll just have to beat a different path, shan’t I? I freed you from his first device and I’ll free you from his second,” Gothmog says. “Let you be a man on your own hook, for once.”

Bauglir is not here.

Bauglir—

— _cannot save you._

Maedhros shuts his eyes.

“Take it off,” Gothmog orders, his voice snapping sharp. “That contraption round your leg.”

 

Morgoth made it to cripple the leg. To cripple the leg, and heal it.

Maedhros—cannot pry it off.

 

(He does try.)

 

Gothmog watches him. He does not speak for an agonizing span of time. Maedhros’s fingers are bruised and shaking. He has fallen. He has seen the world go white and tilted, with falling.

“Go and fetch Goodley,” Gothmog orders, at last.

 _I wanted to see if you were lying_ , Belle admonishes mournfully, in his mind.

_I was. Are you satisfied?_

He hopes it is all a ruse, her listening presence. He cannot hear movement, breathing, anything. He tries to lift himself up and crashes down on his hands, with his useless, bound, tormented leg flung outwards.

The shackle is on that ankle, too.

Gothmog stands, and looks at him, and reaches for the whip hanging on the wall behind him.

Maedhros moves faster, out of nothing more than desperation. Gives up on walking. Drags himself with his jaws screwed shut, across long floorboard after long floorboard.

Knows that the breaths heaving through his nose and his teeth are perilously close to sobs.

 

Goodley is nowhere near the door. Maedhros hauls himself up by scraping his hands along the frame. His eyes flood, and he blinks frantically. To call for Goodley is a surprisingly dread reminder of taunting Mairon in Morgoth’s presence: a reckless act, even when commanded.

Maedhros shuts his eyes and calls his nearest monster’s name.

 

Goodley lays him out on the floor none too gently, which is to say, he does it with a right hook to the jaw. Maedhros, winded and a little wild, knows that his limbs are jerking and fights through Feanor and Fingon and Morgoth, always Morgoth, to bring them down again. Goodley is speaking to Gothmog in grunts that might be words. The words are over and done with, a fragment of the past, when Maedhros can hear right again.

The splint lies in several pieces on the floor.

“I’ll not punish you today,” Gothmog says, when he has dismissed Goodley with a nod. The whip is behind him, Maedhros glances at it and looks away.

Gothmog waves a hand.

“On you go.”

 

There was a time when Maedhros did not know what cruelty was.


	19. deal out death in judgment

_He is on his back, his arms tucked against his chest as if he can hold some part of himself within like that. Morgoth has cut away his trouser-leg at the thigh, has actually taken off his own frockcoat and rolled his sleeves up above his elbows._

Ready for surgery, _mocks Maedhros’s roving mind._

_Morgoth’s pale forearms are prickled with black hairs. Maedhros turns his head so he does not have to see, but that way, his face is aligned with Gothmog’s boots. He no more wants to look at the hard, muddied soles than to look at Morgoth. He wants, really, not to look at anything._

_“I shall need hot water and clean rags,” Morgoth says. Purrs, really. It must please him so greatly, being master of another hurt. “These will cleanse him of his filth. And from your lumber-store, Cosomoco, the thinnest cut of wood you have.”_

“Lad,” Gwindor is saying, voice like a storm in Maedhros’s ears, “What happened to you? Jesus, what happened? Tell me you’re not leaving me, _tell me_ —”

Maedhros positions Belle in the center of his mind. Belle, punished for his sake. She hadn’t made a sound, from behind the door, and that is more than he can say for himself. “Get Lem,” he says. He cannot speak very well, yet. He managed to come only as far as the stables, and is crouched with his arms curled around his bare, crooked knee, in insufficient protection. His whole body hums with nerves. He is not himself.

He has not been himself in too long a time for counting.

“What?”

Gwindor’s hands are on his face, rough to the touch as far as their calloused palms, but gentle in their weight. Stroking his hair, grazing his cheek—Maedhros shakes his head free of them. “Get Lem,” he repeats. His voice is almost gone, though he wasn’t screaming. “Can’t be seen. Can’t be seen, with you.”

For a blurred moment, he does not know whether he succeeds in sending Gwindor from his side. He is still out in the open air. Still not  _safe_. (They will never be safe, and Belle, Belle is—)

 

 _Up by the bootstraps_ , Feanor chides, and Maedhros sneers at him.

_What good can you do me? Send Fingon instead._

(But he doesn’t really want Fingon.)

 

The pain subsides, with time. Gwindor  _is_  gone, so he  _did_  listen—unless they have taken Gwindor away too and Maedhros is well and truly failing to separate the real from the unreal. What if they have taken Gwindor and shot him in the skull? What if Belle is not breathing, there in the dark?

“Red,” Lem says, low and awkward, looming so that the hulk of his broad shoulders blocks out the light of the nearest lantern. Night has fallen, while the world was ending. It is only right.

Lem’s mouth is scrunched up behind his scruff beard.

Lem was whipped for failing to finish his task. Lem’s face is still scarred and scabbed where Maedhros slashed it, with the knife Belle didn’t mean to give him.

“Gwindor can’t help me,” Maedhros rasps out. His head is a little clearer now, if nothing else is. “I—can’t walk.”

“Still?”

“Still.” (Through his teeth.)

Lem stoops down and lets Maedhros fit one arm about his neck. The other dangles. One leg dangles too. The angle is still wrong, but if he concentrates (if he _can_ ), he sees that it does not shift and grate as it did.

_It has fused back together, but I fear all wrong, Maitimo—_

“Fool,” Lem says, gruffly.

“I know I am. Get me back to barracks, I’m begging you.”

They don’t speak again, under the lynx eyes of Harris and Knox, until Maedhros is laid out on Haldar’s old cot. The last bell hasn’t been rung for the night. Most of the other men are still at evening labor, in the stables or the kitchens. Maedhros is still trying to master time, and what it can do for him.  

Lem stands back. Folds his arms over his chest.

“Talk.”

“I can’t talk.” Maedhros’s leg twitches. Lem could kill him, or maim him anew, and Maedhros would nearly have  _asked_  for it.

Instead of killing him, Lem stalks to the bunks, pokes about a bit, and drags out a bundle of cloth. “Extra trousers,” he says, tossing them unceremoniously at Maedhros’s chest. “Since you’ll be needing them.”

Maedhros’s fingers crook into the rough fabric, but he holds them almost like a talisman, the pause swelling with surprise. Of course, it is now that Gwindor chooses to make his entrance. The door flies open, and his rage is no less replete with vitriol for being delivered in a stage-whisper.

“You damned devil, what d’you mean, running with  _him_. Calling for  _him_.”

“I ain’t hurt him, Soldier,” Lem says, his voice hard. Gwindor ignores him.

Maedhros throws up a hand. “I told you to  _go_.”

“It’s expected that I watch you, you bastard.” Gwindor is ashen with rage. “What am I supposed to think, when you’re dragged off like that and now—” His eyes fall on Maedhros’s leg. “I counted to five hundred, all so you could puff up like a dead jackrabbit.”

Even were it not for the marks of Mairon’s knife and iron, the thick, plummy bruising would make his flesh a hideous thing.

 

_“The bone has not broken skin,” Morgoth says, satisfied. When he prods, Maedhros moans. “Ah, ah. You are still so capable of pain, my boy. It gives me hope for you.” To Gothmog, he says, “Let him have something to bite down upon, while I set it.”_

_Maedhros must look into the eyes of the man who took his body and soul in ragged pieces, and be grateful._

Gwindor kneels by the side of the cot. “You told me it was getting better.”

Maedhros has to shut his eyes to even attempt a smile. The attempt, he is sure, is not a very good one. “And you believed me, didn’t you?”

“Where’s Belle?” Lem asks, from up above.

“Alive.” At the sound of Lem's voice, which his body fears, Maedhros recalls himself, his plight. Did Gwindor make him forget, even for a moment? “That’s all I can—I must go back out, we must all go back to work. Gwindor, I mean it. No questions.”

(She must have listened to every word, while he faltered and begged.

Was it enough? Did his desperate strategy do a bit of good?)

_Not so much as a lick of water…_

“I’ll take the devil himself, if I’m made to leave afore you let me bind that.” Gwindor stares Maedhros down, and then turns to stare Lem down.“I waited ‘round long enough, to make certain I wasn’t spotted. Lem, A length of something stiff. Even a stick’ll do it.”

How much pain until it doesn’t matter anymore? Until he surrenders, and pledges nothing to man, woman, or child, ever again?

As luck would have it, Lem finds a bit of lumber scrap, used for kindling the cook-fires, that is half as long as his arm. Gwindor asks no more questions as he binds it along the line the femur should run. He is, in fact, stonily silent.

 _Femur_ , Fingon says brightly.  _A very important bone._

_Oh, God, not now. I’ll go half-mad, listening to you now._

Lem braces Maedhros's arm and holds his good leg steady as Gwindor tears away the other trouser leg, using the tatters to pad beneath the narrow plane and bind the whole. Then the new trousers are drawn over the contraption; an easy enough business, since they are several sizes too large.

It hurts. The bruising and whatever wrongs remain in the bone _hurt_.

“Russandol—” Gwindor says, in his softest voice, as if Lem isn’t even there.

“Not here.” Maedhros looks away from him, looks at Lem. One coward, one traitor, to another. “Three days. That’s all the time we have.”

(Because one can live three days, without water.)

 

Gothmog does not drag him back to take the splint away, to take the walking stick (which Gwindor found for him) away. For two nightmarish days, Maedhros is not sure if he would rather be crawling or walking in such a way. His body is one long betrayal, and his mind is pulsing with the plan that must now be ready before the hour he would have chosen for it.

He has no choice in this. He has a cursed future, but perhaps that is so that others need not. The children, when they appear (often with the offer of new walking sticks) are hollow-eyed and desperate. They miss Belle. They know where Belle is—at least, Sticks does—but Maedhros sends them from his side with only dry-lipped assurances that they must not look for her, must not try to help her.

It feels like the cruelest thing he has done yet, and he has killed men who deserved it and men who did not.

(Hating himself, here, is the only thing that has remained easy.)

Gwindor seems almost angry with him. Indeed, this is a wholly understandable mood, since Maedhros turned to Lem for counsel at the critical moment, and since Maedhros will not speak to him of anything other than their need to go back. Back to the smithy, and the death-heated forge.

 _Hold on_ , Maedhros pleads, to a girl who cannot hear him.  _Hold on a little longer. I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry._

These are the kinds of prayers that floated on the wind with the charred feathers of Ulmo’s Bridge.

_That’s_

_because_

_you left me_

_If this is your vengeance—_

There are so many faces, so many voices, asking: _whose?_

Nobody speaks to them—not Knox, not any of the other guards—as they climb into the cart for the morning return to the forge and forest. Maedhros bid the children farewell last night. It was not a happy parting. Frog has been hunting for Belle and crying. He tried to burrow into Maedhros’s arms after supper, but Maedhros told Sticks to take him away.

He cannot risk the children. Not now.

(This is farewell.)

He did his best to be good, for those two days. Did his best to cause no further trouble. To keep Gwindor from fretting any more than he already was. It was no easy task. Sleep was a distant memory, and anything but fevered scheming and whispered exchanges with Lem, who had made his own promise, seemed to be a mockery of time. Eating and drinking were loathsome, when he knew how dry and aching Belle’s throat must be.

Gwindor does not speak to him, when they disembark at the forest-edge. Maedhros must drag his own half-splinted leg up to the smithy. He does not complain. His hands are flexing and itching with Feanor’s longing, for the work.

(Feanor never worked against stakes like these.)

 

Maeglin’s dark eyes, hot metal, rushing steam, shaking hands—no.

Hands that _must not_ shake. He is nothing, now, but his hands: they move as if they have a life and freedom of their own. As if they are unbruised. As though Mairon never tore out a nail; as if they were not bound, fairly bloodless, time and time again.

Maedhros builds a future until the sun goes down.

“Enough,” Murphy says, at last. For a moment, Maedhros cannot be sure if he did his duty or not. Maeglin, sweat crawling down his brow and his neck like rain, is slumped against the bench. Maedhros is all pain and wire-strung energy. He feels fire in his breast.

His father used to say it was like that, the work.

(Feanor never—)

There; he can see. It is finished. That is what matters, now, if anything still does. It is finished.

 

He leaves the guns cooling. He does not eat. Gwindor does not speak, but he watches. His eyes flicker on the other side of the campfire coals. Murphy’s pipesmoke hangs in the air like tattered ribbons. Maedhros’s fingers ache. Ten of them, ten fingers, that is, but they were enough to craft a row of weapons that shine even by dusk.

All the faces and all the voices are drawn out by worry.

None of them are proud.

 

The day—it is tomorrow. The day Belle has to live. The day Maedhros has to save his brothers, save these people, and die.

Murphy chains him to the bench, for sleeping. By the ankle, this time, because the splint is only at his thigh. With his arm free, Maedhros is more nervous than relieved. He worries his wrist with rubbing. The lights are gone, now. Not even a single lantern burns, and night presses down against teeth, eyelids, and the back of Maedhros’s neck.

He can hear Gwindor moving in the dark.

“Steady on,” Gwindor says, half to himself. “We risk all, for a few moments.”

There is a scratch, the drawn breath of a flame, and a lantern leaps to life.

Maedhros sits up. He can do that easily enough, if he braces his bad leg at the hip with one hand. “Where did you—”

“Murphy carries matchsticks so he can smoke in all weather.” Gwindor’s face is almost skeletal in the harsh shadows; Maedhros thinks of Feanor’s skull and suffers, but reminds himself that Gwindor still has eyes. “He’s a right fool, as we’ve said. Between us, Red, _lout_ doesn’t reach far enough for that ‘un.”

“What are you doing?” Maedhros whispers. He thought—he was sure—that Gwindor was rightfully angry with him, for his silence. His refusal to speak of Belle.

“I’ll be quick, and we can put it out before they come poking about again.”

“Quick?”

Gwindor scrapes his hand over the peppery stubble on his thrust-forward jaw. “Red…” Then he shakes his head. “Never mind. I’ve managed to gather a few things, enough to splint that leg of yours.”

“You already did.”

Gwindor scoffs. “Enough to walk on?”

“With a cane.” Maedhros is being stubborn. He was never like this as a child. What has come over him, on this last night?

“Mind your cheek. You forgetting what tomorrow is?” Gwindor’s voice ratchets up, and Maedhros is going to die tomorrow and ought not to care at all, but—he does not _want_ Gwindor to be angry, rightfully or not.

“I’m sorry,” Maedhros says. “I’m sorry. There was no other way.”

“Did you see her?”

Here it is at last. He draws his right knee up and clasps his arms about it. He cannot snivel. “I didn’t see her, no. He had her—he had her locked away. Starved. All because I—she gave me the comb, and I used it to spite him, I turned it into a knife and gave it to—to Bauglir, and—”

“Right then, all’s right,” Gwindor soothes, his voice gone soft. None of it makes a lick of sense, but Maedhros slumps in on himself in weary gratitude. “Russandol, don’t exert yourself. You’ve got to save that, lad, you’ve got to save it.”

“He is killing her slowly,” Maedhros says, flatly and slowly himself. “I begged. I always do, you know. I always beg.”

He does not look at Gwindor. He looks at his knee. At the rise and fall of his sunken chest.

 _Dead tomorrow_ , Fingon suggests hopefully, but if Maedhros is fair to the living and life’s ghosts, he—he knows that that is a lie. Fingon wouldn’t sound so cheerful about death. Not Fingon.

(He must set Fingon to rights, before the day dawns red.)

“It’ll be three days then, tomorrow. She can—she can live that long. She’s a fighter.” Gwindor seems to be trying to reassure both of them at once.

“I know.”

“Then you worked like a mad man, and had no time to tell me, even out of ‘Mog’s hearing?”

“Something like that.”

“You don’t always beg,” Gwindor says, unexpectedly. “Only when you have to.”

He turns away—Maedhros glanced up, to see, for just a moment. He feels quite young, all of a sudden. Quite young, and very tired. It is a sharp pang of the past. The nights after his father left them, in an April long ago—the few nights in between the first and the night that Morgoth came.

Maedhros did not know what lay ahead, then. Did not know what footsteps would begin their relentless pursuit of them, of him.

Yet he feared.

“You don’t know me,” he answers, though he shuffles his body forward, nearer to Gwindor, who has begun to lay lengths of plank and branch and twine out, in the lantern’s glow. “You only think you do.”

_I hate all the lies—_

_—I’ll kill again, and so will you, more than likely._

(His brothers.)

“There’s no time for you being a fool, Russandol.” Gwindor stretches both his hands out, nods, and waits until Maedhros nods back. Slowly, Gwindor rolls the trouser-leg up past knee and thigh. It is wide enough that he can work it past the splint.

_You cannot die, for I will walk the rest of the way to the west coast and into the ocean, Maedhros. I swear to God I will._

The sob is rising, as he is falling. He covers his face in his hands and Gwindor swears.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No—no—it isn’t you—”

The shadowed golden flame, the dark hulking room of metal and metal-working: these seem to spin.  But Gwindor’s hand is warm and firm on his knee. An anchor, if nothing else.

“You listen here,” Gwindor says. “I’m going to bind this, and you are going to tell me three things: first, where we are to _go_ tomorrow, when we’re through.”

_Are they yours—or mine—to disobey?_

“Very well.”

“I’ll warn you, I’m not the best doctor. You’ll forgive it?”

“The best doctor is very far from here,” Maedhros says softly. He breathes deeply in his chest, then: “Tomorrow, you must not wait. You’ll be the swifter runner. I’ll stay here, as planned, and you’re to take everyone south and east across the river—before anything else. Do you know the surround, at all?”

“I know which way the railroad is.”

“But no towns?”

Gwindor has with him a sapling, stripped of bark, about the width of finger. He lays it alongside Maedhros’s straightened leg. “I don’t hail from these parts, Red. I was taken elsewhere. Chain-gang for years, and brought to this compound when the railroad came west.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t ask for that. Asked you tell me where to go.”

“Right.” Maedhros flushes. “Very well. I can draw you another map—not a good one—but it will have to do. I didn’t want to show this to Lem. The place you must go is called—Mithrim.”

“Mithrim?”

“Aye. It’s…” How to tell a lie, as if he’s earned it? “It’s a safe-haven for enemies of Bauglir. The people there would take you in. You’ll only be needing the right passwords.”

_But the passwords will have changed, they will have become suspicious, even Mairon knew the secret words…he spoke them long ago, the night you could have killed him at your knees…_

“Passwords? Is it a fortress, then?”

Maedhros follows the flicker of the lantern light with his eyes. Mithrim is safety for some and death for others. Mithrim is Ulfang, but also—

_Surely Morgoth would tell me, if they were—_

 “Ask for Maglor,” he says at last. Says it lightly, as if the words—the name, most of all—do not break him. “He will help you, I think.”

It should be longer, since he last spoke the name aloud. But he betrayed his dear brother when he thought he was paying out his own debts, and now it is of no consequence. Maglor is not _Maglor_ , soft-eyed and strong-voiced. Maglor is a key to someone else’s freedom.

“Maglor,” Gwindor says, turning the name over for its syllables only, without _knowing._ “Ask for Maglor. Why can’t you ask for Maglor yourself? Can we not wait at the gates until you arrive?”

Maedhros does not laugh, though madness nearly drives him to. “And be picked off by whomever follows you?”

“You know what I’m asking,” Gwindor counters, grimly.

Maedhros grits his teeth. “We’ve agreed—”

“We’ve agreed that I’ll go along the river till it’s shallow, cross, take the roundabout through forest long as I can, and then likely two or three days of crossing the plains. Keep east, and south. If I’ve any luck at all, I’ll come to a settlement, and beyond the settlement, another few miles, this Mithrim place.” His hand has tracked Maedhros’s crude map in the dirt.

Even this—the plan that is intended to succeed—is near-hopeless.

What would Feanor do?

_He would die. He did._

“You must not move too quickly,” Maedhros says, “Or you will exhaust the women and children, and the men, too. You need to be able to stand and fight against any…stragglers.”

“But I still will reach Mithrim before you?”

“I’ll have to go by horse,” Maedhros says, reluctantly. “Leave the compound in fit condition for me, and I should be able to take one without trouble.”

“You really think you can get up and down off a horse with that leg?”

Maedhros doesn’t.  “I’ll manage.”

“Russandol. Don’t lie to me.”

“I have been riding since I was in dresses,” Maedhros pleads. Gambling, as always. “Would you risk the life of every other slave here, to make perfectly certain that I still can?”

Gwindor clears his throat. Perhaps he is dropping the subject for now, if only to pick up another. “Now for the second question, Red.”

“What?” Maedhros whispers. The splint is finished; they have scrubbed out the map. Gwindor hasn’t snuffed the lantern, though.

“You needn’t tell me everything,” Gwindor says. “But you might tell me something, since we’ve come this far.”

His father once bid him rest against his shoulder, so that he could sleep. They had come a long way, too.

Maedhros shifts, lowers himself on his back. His arms are free; a novelty in the forge, at night. He tucks one behind his head, his hand curling against his ear like one of the shells he used to pluck along the seashore.

He could ask, _Something?_ and drag out Gwindor’s questioning until the man gives up. Or he could acknowledge again that he will die tomorrow, that speaking of Maglor only may not be all he wants. So, he says, “What has Murphy been telling you in the woods?”

“Eh?”

Maedhros huffs a laugh he cannot mean. “Come now. He used to delight in kicking me when I was down—and I was always down, there. Oh, it doesn’t matter what _happened_ to me. You’ve seen for yourself. Of course, he—Bauglir—said and did so much that I don’t know if—if I’ll ever remember it fully, except as a sort…a sort of blood-layer on my skin. The kind of thing you can’t wash off, even if you thought you deserved to try. The truth is, Gwindor, he didn’t say anything that I didn’t already know, but I—I said a great many things _he_ didn’t know. That’s why I can’t forgive myself. I ruined—I ruined the chances of people who deserve better.”

 _Christ_ , but it’s hard to stop once started.

Gwindor says, quietly and gingerly, “No one could blame you. No one.”

Maedhros flexes his fingers. Gives in, and twines them in his hair “I don’t know about that. You disliked it about me, too. I’m a cocky bastard. I fought back in—in quite stupid ways.”

It is Gwindor’s turn to chuckle. “You could tell me about that.”

“Would you like to hear it? I scratched him across the face, once. I bit his hand like a dog.”

“Oi. Well done, Red.”

“You haven’t heard the finest bit, though.” Maedhros wishes Gwindor would put the lantern out, so that none of its shine would reveal the tears threatening to well. “He tore a nail off my hand and a tooth out of my mouth, and I bawled and fainted like a baby.” He thought he could say more, more about what followed, even though—but as it turns out, he can’t.

Gwindor must sense that. Gwindor is no lout. He is the best and bravest, and too kind. “You had people, then? People who deserved better.” A pause. “You needn’t—Lord knows I—”

“It’s alright. Yes. There were…” He can see the faces again, just for a golden moment. He drowns, the good way of drowning, which still means that he forgets to breathe.

“Brothers?”

“Yes.” This startles him back to the present. “How did you know?”

Gwindor reaches over and snuffs the lantern at last, before he answers. His voice is carefully flat. “There’s—there’s a look.”

“You?”

“Just one.”

 _Dead_ , Maedhros knows. They might as well have said the word together; he does not have to see his friend. He can feel the grief passing between them in the dark, like a payment, or perhaps some dread and gruesome contract, that they signed unwitting, that they must close their hands on now in heart-stung shame.

Gwindor shudders out a sigh. “Fuck, it don’t do to be curious.”

“Is that what it was?”

“No. I just—”

“Wanted to know a little better the man whose trust you’d stake your life on?” Maedhros asks, drily. To be dry is a refuge, he has found.

Gwindor laughs again. “You’re such a young…codger. That’s the only word for it. Full of cheek and theater.”

Maedhros wants, achingly, to thank him. He doesn’t.

 

He sleeps, and does not dream.

 

_If I were to think about the children now, I’d think them unyielding. There is so little in them, beyond their skin and bones, that I know they must be cruel. Am I too harsh? I was a child once. I cried and hoped and dreamed as much as any of them…_

 

This is the way his hand closes around the gun he made day by simple, perilous day:

Steadily.

The first precious bullet (he has only six) finds a home in Harris’s chest. The man was standing beside the gas lamp—Maedhros would have killed any man who was—and when he tumbled back, he struck it to the floor. The floor, in turn, sprang to gleaming life.

Feanor could make fuel from anything. Maedhros asked Gwindor to scrape the sap from trees whenever he could. He himself collected grease-stained rags and tucked them in every hidden corner. The smithy is half mountain; it will not burn, but, filled with flaming things, it will burn _out_.

The second bullet takes a man between the eyes. How is his hand not shaking?

_Because you know._

He falls. His leg screams in supplication: up, up, up. The fire crackles. He keeps his head low as Murphy rushes him, red-faced. He counts, not aloud. Fires the third bullet under the crook of his bent knee, aiming beneath the forge bench.

The clutch of grenades concealed there sends Murphy—and a dozen others—flailing backward. Maedhros has not fought like this since Ulfang appeared before him. Before that…before that, did he do much more than scratch and crawl a little? He must not lose time now.  

His ears are ringing, likely bleeding. Enough force can burst the delicate eardrum; Maedhros does not particularly need eardrums for a few more hours of life, but he must bear the pain of their loss like any other: heavily. The sounds and shouts are far away. The burning is not. He feels scorched all over, dusted in black ash, even on the other side of the forge…to which he crept, at the start of all this, letting Maeglin take the lead in demonstrating how the marvelous Feanorian guns could be used.  

_Maeglin._

Guilt is never far, no matter if there is time for it or not. Where is Maeglin? This is one flaw in his plan of flaws: he does not want that sharp, distrustful boy to die, and yet would kill him anyway.

He glances wildly about, in the instant before starting his frantic crawl outward. He does not see Maeglin, at least. Maybe a child’s blood—another child’s blood—is not on his hands.

(Hell will welcome him without regard to this.)

 _Move, you fool_ , Gwindor orders. As if Gwindor could forgive a child’s death, Gwindor who can still barely bring himself to speak Haldar’s name.

Maedhros crawls. He crawls and limps and drags and does not look _hard_ at the men tossing and groaning and dying. Murphy, squirming and cursing, seems still to be alive; others, too, may be merely winded. Maedhros has three more bullets. He kills the man who blocks his path. A dirty shot through the jaw, which is the best he can do with his elbows all but on the ground.

 

Bauglir did not come down the mountain. Bauglir lives.

Half the overseers came to collect their weapons, along with the forge-workers and Angband's guards. Half the overseers remained behind with Gothmog. What this means for Gwindor, Maedhros can only hope.

 

The sun outside shines overhead with the pearl solemnity of autumn morning. Now that he does not need his hands (if only for a moment), Maedhros finds that he can stand. Gwindor splinted the poor leg properly; it will carry him (if only for a moment).

Two bullets. The horses, tethered among the copse of new trees, are gone wild as aspens in a windstorm. They tremble and stamp. Maedhros’s plot did not leave him alone. It left some men living. He leaves them, also—two bullets.

He has combed and cleaned these creatures, these fair steeds. He has picked stones from their hooves. Even before Gwindor was his friend, he had the horses for comfort.

They are clever, and they remember him.

 

Maeglin’s high voice was still speaking when Maedhros fired the first shot. He had been eager to explain the work he took part in. He had been eager, because he was young.

If Bauglir lives, but Maeglin lives also, is the sum of the two a thing that can matter to Feanor’s son? Perhaps not, but he hasn’t time to decide the knife-edged question. He hasn’t time.

 

Then, and now—too much to lose of himself, before he counts himself. He loves his brothers as if they are beside him. He knows he will never see them again. He told Gwindor lies to sate him, and yet he mounts a horse with no bullets remaining in his gun. Two more men dashed out to fight him; he shot one in the shoulder and the other in the belly.  They are writhing at the forge-mouth now. 

(He did not let Maeglin teach them the rudiments of loading and firing, according to Feanor’s efficient scheme—whether stymied by hurt or ignorance, the rest are still struggling within their smoldering tomb.)

He is going to die today, but he wants to live. All the breath is gone from him. He buries his hand in the coarse, warm horsehair. Patient beast: she calms at his touch, despite her fear.

Could anyone say the same—

He is going to die today. His good leg is up, and he cries out, deep in his chest—

Feanor’s son is astride, with his empty weapon and his full hands.

 

_Maglor Celegorm Caranthir Curufin Amras Amrod_

_Fingon_

_For you._

Before he kicks his unequal heels against the mare’s flanks, Maedhros looks over his shoulder.

 

(He rides hard, so hard, with the wind screaming in ears that cannot rightly hear.)

 

Maedhros looks over his shoulder, and this is what he sees: darkness at the edge of the forest, amid the pearl-pale light. Dark furs, white hands. A face he would know for its cant more than its features, even a hundred paces away.

All this, standing perfectly still.

 

(He rides hard.)


	20. our plain duty to escape

_Now you and I both know that no rescue comes, no word of faith…_

He called it freedom, after, because he thought he could have chosen the moment of his defeat. Bound to rack after rack of torment, mangled by inches, the memory of that offer was poison-sweet. Regret lapped at his skin as surely as sweat and blood did.

He does not call it freedom now—does not give it a name at all. Deaf in the wind, blind in the sun, mute for the breath whipped in his lungs. How can his mind turn to Melkor Bauglir on the mountainside, so long ago? Was he as afraid then as he is in this moment, when Mairon follows?

_No rescue comes…_

It must be the words, and not the desire for death, that return to him.

(How long had Mairon been watching? What was his weapon, his plan?)

Maedhros gasps in a mouthful of air. His leg is cramping fiercely, but he leans forward, pinning his elbows almost better than he can his knees. Gwindor must not—Gwindor must not be caught off his guard. Maedhros must warn him, before it is too late.

Gwindor would never have agreed to it, but Maedhros knew even before terror drove him on. He was always going to return to Gothmog’s camp.

 

_Surely you thought of fleeing. Surely, you still do._

_Leap into the dawn…_

 

“ _No!_ ” he shouts, not for his own ears to hear. He flings a glance over his shoulder; no one follows, but would he know? What is left that he can know? His desires, his horrors, his hopes: all must remain, or nothing will.

Belle in the guardhouse and the children cowering in their straw, Gwindor and Lem fighting for the liberty of those who have forgotten what it is to be free. Somewhere, farther-flung, Maglor and Celegorm, Caranthir and Curufin, Amras and…and all of Mithrim that still stands.

He is sick; he is going to be sick; he has no time to be sick. Morgoth would have crowed over him if Ulfang had killed Celegorm, killed Maglor.

(In his waking hours, he has never once been able to imagine Maglor, dead.)

 

Maedhros rides too long, too quickly. He is spending strength he will not be able to regain. He pounds the path that the rough cart used to travel, bearing him and Gwindor back and forth between two different hells. He still smells sulphur and damnation, and believes it to belong to only one of those hells—

Then he sees that the compound is also burning.

There can be no relief without certainty. Maedhros learned this when his father died. And before that…but there is no retrieving what he willingly gave, whether it was to thieves or angels. The Maedhros who looked last on Utumno, burning, is still far enough away to be dead.

 _You, too, shall die today_ , he tells himself, in his own cold voice. Only, it is not very cold. He is too tired for that. He draws his steed up before the bend in the path and

cannot—

“Russandol!”

 

_When they were slaves (and they are slaves, but Maedhros is going to die tomorrow), they traveled far enough with chains about their necks to see where the forest closed around the river._

_Maedhros said: “Remember that.”_

“Russandol!” Gwindor is shouting for him, and waving his arms, and Gwindor is _alive_ , even with blood splashed over one side of his face, even with his ragged clothes blacked with soot. Gwindor slipped away this morning, when Murphy, forgetful as they counted on him being, went down to meet the overseers who came for their guns.

Maedhros—Maedhros cannot dismount. His whole body is wracked by tremors. He gags and retches, chin tucked against his shoulder.

Gwindor runs.

“Russandol, you bastard, you bastard, you’re safe, we’re all safe.” These are words that fall like stones—softer than stones, maybe, but just as unconnected. Meaningless. Then Gwindor is taking him down, taking him in arms that are strong, though they are twisted.

All around are snapping gunshots, and screams, and the crackle of flames…

Maedhros is in Utumno again. The arms are his arms, and he is his father. His knees give out.

Gwindor does not let him fall.

Maedhros wakes, as it were, to feel Gwindor’s hold tighten. To feel Gwindor’s blood-tacked lips press briefly against his temple.

“Shouldn’t be here,” Gwindor is roaring, or whispering—is  _telling him very firmly_ , in Gwindor’s way.

Maedhros remembers. Maedhros lifts his arms and closes them around his friend’s neck, and does not let go for enough of a moment to count as the thanks he could not give before.  

“I had to come,” he says simply. “I had—”

_Because Mairon is following. Mairon, who began it all, who chased down my brother, who killed the last friends I knew._

“Can you walk?”

“I’m stiff, but I can. I can fight, too.” Maedhros does not want to tell him, doesn’t want to steal the blank relief from Gwindor’s thin face. “Give me a knife, or something. Anything.” His ears have not stopped ringing. Gwindor's voice--and indeed, any sound--is far away.

“All’s right, lad. We’ve knives and more.” Gwindor grins like an arrow released. “We’ve _reinforcements_.”

Maedhros looks past him. His hand is still on Gwindor’s shoulder—for steadiness, or for comfort, he has no time to decide which. The yard is a melee—figures dash too quickly to be made out, and there are bodies on the ground. Another mass of bodies, these living and moving, crawls out above the barracks towards the open field.

 _The slaves_.

“Who…” Who fights, if not the slaves? But the question dies in his throat, for his memory makes pace with his mind at last. Gothmog’s guardhouse is an inferno. The joists are black pillars, the roof crushed in like ruined paper. “Christ,” Maedhros cries hoarsely, and his hand clenches hard, shaking Gwindor before he recalls that he is hurting Gwindor’s bad shoulder. “Where’s Belle?”

“Don’t you worry, Red. I got her out. Women are looking after her. Giving her water. She’s in a bad way. She’s—”

“No time for that,” Maedhros says. He lets go, to test himself, and though the pain and stiffness make him lurch, he  _can_  take one step, and another, and another afterwards. “I saw him. I saw…”  _You must speak, you must tell him. Don’t be a coward,_ now. “Mairon,” he whispers.

Somehow—through some heartbreak—Gwindor hears him above the din, above the canon-fire in Maedhros's own head. His cheeks fade to a sickly color beneath the filth.

“Mairon? Here?”

“He didn’t see me,” Maedhros answers numbly. That is the second most important piece of information—and it is, of course, a lie. Mairon watched him in waiting, ready silence. Mairon is a hunter with his gaze and his teeth already open and set. But if Gwindor knows that—

“You sure? You dead sure?”

“He was running for the forge. The plan worked—they’re dead or delayed, the men who came. I managed to kill five with the gun and a couple more, I’d wager, with the fire.”

"How much time do we have?”

“Not long.” Maedhros fights through the sudden, relentless image of Mairon forcing him to his knees, slicing his hateful mark through the tender skin of Maedhros’s neck. A great eye, always watching. “Not long, for there are horses there, too. A quarter hour is generous. Gwindor, where is Belle?”

“Mog must have sent his guardhouse up in blazes, when he realized we were fighting,” Gwindor says. “Lem and I figured so. He didn’t come out, and we were holding our own pretty well…but then there was smoke, and not from  _our_  fires. We ran. I managed to bash the front door in, and get her out. She’ll live, I think. I hope. But Lem went round the back to—” Gwindor stops short, choked off. He swipes his forehead with one hand, smearing blood and dirt together. There is a jagged cut along his left eyebrow. “I was looking for Lem when I seen you.”

“We’ll find him together,” Maedhros says. He knows, as Gwindormust also, that Lem is likely dead. “Who fights, now?”

“Our men, still. I counted five killed, but there’s far more of us than there are of them, even without weapons to match. They killed a woman, too. But—” Gwindor nods, as if he reassures himself, as if he is pushing past pains both old and new. “An army rose out of nowhere, Russandol. Native peoples, blowing horns and crying aloud.”

“Natives?”

“Lightning,” Gwindor says solemnly. He has taken Maedhros’s elbow and is guiding him the long way round the chaos of the yard, towards the rear of the guardhouse. “Used to say we’d know her like lightning.”

“Who?” Maedhros sees a discarded knife on the ground—and Knox’s crooked body beside it, the throat cut from ear-to-ear. He points, and Gwindor fetches him the blade.

“Haldar.”

There is no time to understand this—except in his treacherous heart.  _They came for him, his people. They came back to save him._

_Too late._

He stumbles. Again, with Gwindor beside him, he does not fall.

 

They must not come too close to the burning guardhouse; its flanks split and crumble in white-hearted heat, and the detritus of its destruction falls in flaming missiles. There is no sign of Gothmog. Gothmog will kill him, Maedhros knows. It is only a matter of making certain that Gothmog cannot kill Gwindor.

He knots his hands in fists. The bone in his leg is near healed, leaving only the lurch and the pain, but not the same danger: these, therefore, he must not mind. He must instead be _strong_ , strong enough to kill Gothmog if he is also to die. Gothmog has taken enough from him; Gothmog shan’t have Gwindor.

 _A little more time, a little more time._ This is never a prayer.

Gwindor, for his part, has fallen silent, careful in his tracking as Maedhros cannot quite be in his.

If he is truthful, Maedhros knew he would see him again—or he _hoped_ he would, despite his death-despair. The air sings with fire and the wind chokes with ash.

Gwindor is all that keeps Maedhros from Utumno.

There—there in a tumble of limbs, heaving and groaning and struggling away from the heat—

Lem.

 

His breast is broken open. Gory and irretrievable. Gwindor sinks to his knees. Maedhros stands. Keeping watch.

“You—Lem, you fool,” Gwindor says, his voice a roughened sigh. “What have they done to you?”

Maedhros’s eyes flood with tears. The rush makes the pain in his ears throb insistently. He forces himself to look at the sky, to follow the signs of daylight, as if it isn’t already all around him. They ought to have this moment, two men who once were friends.

“Mog’s got ‘em,” Lem is saying. “You’ve—you’ve—”

“What? Don’t talk, don’t talk, it doesn’t matter.” And Gwindor’s hands—hands that Maedhros knows, now, almost as well as his own—settle on Lem’s shoulders, where there is no hurt. “Lie still.”

Lem’s broad, bearded face is ugly with suffering. “Can’t. Fuck, I can’t. Gwindor—” And he coughs, and he screams, and Gothmog isn’t coming.

There is nothing to do here but watch Lem die.

 

(If Maedhros had leapt when given the chance, he would not have known anyone else to love. Somewhere, there was a fatal error, and he thinks that that error was half his survival, and half something greater than that.)

 

“Red,” Lem says. “Russandol.” It takes effort, to speak with blood running thick and fast amid a ruined ribcage. His lungs and heart alike must be failing.

(Fingon flickers, calm and relentless, in the corners of Maedhros’s mind.)

Only a coward would not answer. Maedhros turns and stoops, feeling cruelly childish in the way he clasps his hands over his knees. “I am sorry,” he says.

“Fuck, no,” Lem rasps out. He is gurgling, now. How long has he fought the inevitable? Maedhros never thought him a brave man.

“What do you have to say?” Maedhros asks, because Gwindor’s mouth is a hard line set against weeping, and that, he must be allowed.

“He’s coming,” Lem mumbles, choked. “He’s coming back.”

Maedhros wheels around, but there is nothing—no change, in the roar of falling timber and the shouting chorus beyond.

“The railroad,” Maedhros says, when Gwindor offers no word. “He must have gone—for more men. Is that—”

Lem nods. His eyes have slipped shut. His face is pale.

Maedhros’s heart beats faster.

“Lem.” Gwindor shifts one hand to Lem’s cheek. Saying a name can’t keep someone alive,  _but damned if it isn’t the first and last thing you try_. “Lem, stay with us. Tell us—Lem.  _Lem._ ”

“He’s gone,” Maedhros says. Still, he does not kneel. If he did, he would not be able to rise quickly. He has one hand on his knife.

Gwindor takes his hands away. He staggers to his feet. “Very well,” he answers. (Stone, he is like stone.) “You must be on it, he’ll have gone to the railroad.”

“We can’t know how many men he’ll bring back.” Maedhros casts a glance over his shoulder. Then, too—“And Mairon.”

(Had he forgotten, even for a moment, while Lem drowned in his own lungs?)

“We’ll be beset on both sides.” Gwindor jerks his head back towards the yard. A wave of heat, errant as a gust of wind, ruffles the singed undergrowth around them, and their hair. The roof of Gothmog’s guardhouse has caved in.

 

They leave Lem’s body behind as if they never grieved it. Maedhros carries the guilt for both of them; none of it by rights belongs to Gwindor, who failed no one, save by bearing the burden of being only one man. When they reach the yard, they find no battle in it. The thralls have come down off the field to huddle in confusion, a safe number of paces away from the smoldering remains of the guards’ barracks.

A band of half-a-dozen strangers, guns and knives and spears still in hand, stand in wrathful formation between the whipping posts.

One of them is the tallest woman Maedhros has ever seen.

Not his height—not even near it, in truth, but with her broad-brimmed hat upon her head, she would be above his stooping shoulders if they were close. He knows that she is a woman at once, because he has known men too well and too long to mistake her for one.

She has nothing of Mairon or Gothmog or himself about her.

“To the mountain,” she cries, fierce and sharp, but Gwindor lurches forward, his gait betraying what Lem’s death took, and says,

“No, we cannot delay.”

Her dark hawk-eyes shift to Maedhros. So do the eyes of her followers. He says nothing. He is not the leader, here.

“Cannot?” Her gun is steady in her hand. Her weather-beaten cheeks and resolute expression make it hard to tell her age—

( _You will know her like lightning_ )

—but Maedhros is reminded of no one so much as Celegorm.

His brothers make him think of Mairon again. He is not the leader here, but he drags his crippled leg behind him and steps even with Gwindor.

Lem’s blood stains Gwindor’s hands. He does not deserve this.

“Reinforcements are coming,” Maedhros says, looking the woman straight in the eye. She does not frighten him, because he can tell that she is good. “Not yours.”

“You were already fighting,” she answers. “We came only at the sign of rising smoke.”

The hot air is cloying, and one ear rings louder than the other, but Maedhros hears, somehow, the mountain wind. The mountain is waiting. “Give them hope. Please.”

It is the first time in a long time that he thinks of his  _please_ as a prayer.

He is always surprised when the brave are also wise.

 

Her name is Haleth. He knows exactly whose death is beating at her breast, calling for vengeance. Haldar’s bones have broken inside him and around him time and time and time again, since that day. It is the same as the plunge of the blades into the priest’s heart. The same as the arrow in Jem’s eye. The same as the horse and rider slipping down to the devouring river, even though that loss was not his to see.

“You,” she says. “Who are you?”

“I am Russandol.”

“Well then, Russandol.” She holsters her gun at her belt. “I will save my brother’s people, though they did not save  _him_.”

This close, the tear-tracks on her face are visible, shining through the dust. She permits, otherwise, no sign of sorrow.

 

Haleth and her followers make certain that every one of Gothmog’s men is dead. Maedhros—Russandol—follows Gwindor, and Gwindor leads him to the other men, men who scorned or avoided him, men who now protect the women and children.

Two of the women are crouched beside Belle, who is lying on a makeshift bed of rags.

The whole world watches.

Maedhros can do nothing, but count.

“Half of ours, we left at the railroad,” Haleth is saying. “We go back to meet them.”

“If they still live,” Gwindor argues tightly. “The leader of _these_ is gone there, and not for naught. We’re powerful grateful, but you’ve stepped in a hornet’s nest here. You’ve—”

“We’ve come for Bauglir,” Haleth says, her voice snapping like a bowstring. “Yes,  _him_  I know. We stand aside to save you—do not warn us off rejoining our friends.”

Gwindor casts a glance at Maedhros. Maedhros is thinking of Mairon, Maedhros is counting, Maedhros is certain, somehow, that it will not matter how many fighters there are, if Mairon comes.

He does not know all of their names, the thralls. He never learned them. There is Silas, alive but with an ugly gash along his scalp. There is poor Myra, a favorite of the overseers. There is Belle, again, tearing at the beating thing in his chest, by the simple power of her own slack features.

Her face is still a face. He can see that, now. Now that it is pale and distant.

He means to tell Gwindor that they must still make for Mithrim. That Haleth must be wary, lest Gothmog, not her friends,  carries the day at the embattled rails. He means—he _meant_ —to say a great many things, and bid a great many farewells, even, but he stops short.

For all that he does not know them all, he knows enough.

 

One night long ago, Amrod’s bed lay empty.

 

“The children,” he cries, dragging himself close to Gwindor’s side. Gwindor, who has stood tautly at attention to reason with their skeptical savior, turns to face him.

Gwindor always knows where his charge is.

“What?”

“The children—the little ones,” Maedhros says, desperate. “Have you not seen them?”

Urgently, he questions those well enough to answer. Once, he cringed from the gaze of the other slaves, unable to quell the unworthy boy-heart within him that always wondered what they thought of him.

They had seen him gagged, and beaten, and begging for Haldar’s life. Now, he might have wondered if they thought him worthy, knowing as they did his role in their tenuous liberation.

Instead of wondering, he does not care at all.

“Sticks went running,” Silas says, grimacing as he speaks. “She’ll be with the little one.”

Haleth is still as a statue. She does not chide them for their hypocrisy, stalling when they counseled haste a moment before, but Maedhros knows: on all fronts, by all counts, they are running out of time.

“I shall find them,“ Gwindor says. “Go on with Haleth. Show the way.”

Maedhros answers, with his father’s conviction and his mother’s despair, “If they are hiding and afraid, will they come to you?”

Gwindor’s lips twist, pained. “They’ll have to.”

Maedhros shakes his head.

“Then we’ll both go, Red.” He seizes Maedhros’s shoulder, touching him with Lem’s blood.

Maedhros—loves him. He has loved people before, and never to their gain.

Nothing in life has been fair to Gwindor, until now.

“You must lead them to Mithrim,“ he whispers. “And keep her cautious about Gothmog, if she must regain her friends. God, man, go! You know there’s nothing for it.”

Gwindor looks on him with granite in the lines of his face. Something softer in his eyes.

He releases his hold.

 

Long ago—a whole lifetime, and less than ten years—he and Finrod took the children into the forest. They were lost, when the sun was setting. They were lost, when a storm rose in the night. After, they two, the eldests, made different vows. Not in their words, as some vows were, but in their actions. Finrod charted maps, and knew thereafter where his feet fell when he set one in front of the other. Maedhros always left some word, some promise, to whomever remained behind, that they might be sure where to find him.

(What good, his word?)

Bytimes, he has thought that their whole lives, their sorry fates, were bound to that day. Finwe’s line, hiding under the shadowy boughs and praying for deliverance that they did not deserve—and then, of course, resolving to do better.

Maybe manhood was a thing found in the blinding rain and the whistling wind.

Maedhros-in-the-forest bent his body around the little ones, sheltering them as best he could. He thought he did a brave thing, if a foolish one—keeping them safe.  

Safe. His brothers.

 

The boy crying in his cell is dragged out and dragged back by mocking hands. Are they men, who scorn and goad him? Men, who look on a ruined body?

If they are men, they should be mindful of their own lives.

 

Maedhros kills Murphy in cold blood.

Shrill screams lead him. He has crested the rise of the road that points to the smithy, and there, a horse rears—and there, a man struggles, with the thin body of a girl hanging from his arm—

(He never held his dead brother's body. He only held Amrod when Amrod did not need him; when Amrod was not in danger.)

But Sticks is not dead yet, since she struggles. Nobody is dead yet, while they struggle. Maedhros still believes this, because he is a liar, and sometimes liars have hope.

Knox’s bowie is in his hand. His legs carry him since he gives them no choice. He’ll pay for that later. He’ll— _pay_ , he thinks, vision going black, as Murphy’s elbow catches him under the chin and sends his teeth clacking.

He keeps the knife out in front of him, though he doesn’t know how. Instincts, honed by Feanor in a proud, lithe creature who was murdered and reborn. Murphy has a knife, also, and it is one of only two things that Maedhros sees as he fights: Murpy’s knife, flashing, and Frog’s bare feet, the toes curled, as his little body huddles and heaves under the rough shrubs spilling over the man-carved ditch.

“Fuck you,” Murphy gasps. Maedhros has stabbed him in the shoulder. Murphy has his nicks in, too. Maedhros bleeds hot along his forearm. There is something searing, likewise, in his right thigh. “ _Fuck_ —”

Maedhros cuts his throat. He is weak and ruined and yet the violence sings in him like the high notes of a hymn. It sets his crooked bones to rights. He tastes its sweetness and heaves the corpse off him. He could stab and stab again, but that would cause no pain.

The day throbs white around him. He thinks of how it hurt Murphy, to die. Maedhros knows that it did because the man died against him, heart almost pressed to heart.

Gory-handed, he sways in the song of that pain.

 

As he ran from Gwindor’s side—from Haleth’s band—from the people he had never thought of as friends, he could hear his heart in his deafened ears again. He was sickeningly afraid. He had felt fear in all its deep, lascivious darkness when he was still, in most ways, a child. But this… _this_  was fear under the open sun.

He is not fit for running. He is not fit for following the points of a compass, since he no longer has one or anything like it. Does he even remember what was stowed in the pockets of his coat?

With a leg like his—with arms and a chest and belly like his—he lopes rather than sprints, and he does so while wondering if he told Gwindor too much or not enough.

 _Below the waterfall, almost at the edge of the forest._ That was what he told Gwindor, and Gwindor  _should_  know what it means because they drew their maps like Finrod did, painstakingly, night after night, when they thought they yet had days ahead of them.

He will bring the children there, to that place… _if_  he can find them.

The next words he said to Gwindor were hateful words.

 _Do not delay more than a day_.

Because if Gwindor and the freemen go up to the railroad—and meeting Haleth’s gaze he knew then, and knows now, that they will—then their road to Mithrim will be made longer. Maedhros’s path to the edge of the forest will have less ground to cover. Gwindor can follow Haleth to another battle, and double back his steps if they are victorious, having directed Haleth and everyone else towards Mithrim.

If Gwindor stays too long, stubborn as he is…

If Maedhros cannot find the children…

_If Gwindor does not come…_

Maedhros does not know the answer to any of these riddles. When he kills Murphy, he does not realize until blood and life are flowing, what answer Murphy brings himself.

 

 _Now I lay me down to sleep_.

Morgoth asked him if death

could

save

 

“Russandol!” Sticks shrieks, wild, and his world opens to other sounds and sights again.

He looks at her, and sees himself and his cruelty and his love of beautiful and brutal sins, shining out of her face like a flying bullet.

He is terribly sorry.

“Russandol,” she cries again, her face twisting in a sob, and then she tumbles towards him. Her knees sprawl close by Murphy’s still-convulsing chest. The blood bubbles; the legs twitch.

Maedhros is kneeling, too. He puts his arms around her.

“Come, Frog,” he rasps out, and when both are in his embrace, he is himself.

 

(Where…)

“Red,” Frog sobs and shivers, his hands stretching towards Maedhros’s sweat-plastered hair. “Red, red.”

“He wanted to take Frog,” Sticks is saying, talking at runaway speed. “Wanted to take Frog, an’ called him his son, but he’s not—Frog’s not anybody’s—Frog’s  _ours_  and Frog’s his own self—”

“All right now,” Maedhros says. “All’s well.”

(Where is…)

His body remembers before his mind does, how much he is afraid.

( _Where is Mairon_.)

 

He wasn’t supposed to survive, but he can’t think of that now. It does no good to imagine how uncaring his lifeless body would be, no matter what Mairon and Mairon’s knife did to it.

“We must get off the road,” he says, pushing the children gently away and gathering himself. Murphy had a horse, and a fast one, but, like the fool he is, he did not tether it. The beast snorts and gambols a hundred yards off, spooking at its own shadow.

“Can we ride the horse?” Sticks asks doubtfully. Maedhros shakes his head. He does not look again at the dead man.

“It doesn’t want to be ridden, I think.”

Why do no more men come along this road?

(There is only one man coming, and he is not a man at all.)

Smoke rises, far and near. Theirs must be a secret, middle way, down these outward slopes of the mountain.

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No.” Sticks reaches for his hand. Frog does the same. Unable to stand and look at them, he helps them down one side of the ditch and up the other, where the grass folds in tussocks and hardy shrubs abound like crumpled trees. They grow higher than the children’s heads.

“Good,” Maedhros says, dry-mouthed...as though Mairon can be seen when he does not want to be. Maedhros's ears still ring from the explosion; he can hear, but not evenly or well. Mairon's silent feet are made yet more deadly.

(The wind was whispering, too, when he was whole, flanked by a man and a woman—both dead—not two straggling waifs.)

 

_I’ve been following him for days. He weaves back and forth, river and field, forest and road, yet he and his horse are nigh exhausted. I do not tire. I will find him, when I have your guts looped around my belt and your scalp woven into my pelts._

“Russandol,” Sticks says. Maedhros lifts his head. It is not quite a winter day, but the air is cool. The forest is a black finish-line in the downhill distance, across acres of this ragged mountain grassland. Not much time has passed; not so many moments. He has only tripped, betrayed by his wretched leg, and fallen on his bruised shins.

How much of his wits have already left him?

“I am sorry,” he says thickly. He is so afraid that the back of his throat twitches with the urge to vomit. His jaw grinds; his inner ears are maddeningly tender. “Stay low to the ground.”

_I do not tire._

The whole of his vision is flooded with blood and Mairon’s yellow eyes.

“You are too tall to stay low,” Sticks says, compassionately. “And kneeling won’t do you any good. We’d best make haste. Make haste while the sun shines.”

That is not the saying. It is the sort of misstep Caranthir might make, mishearing and then turning the meaning in his own way, making it something else entirely. Caranthir…steady, stalwart Caranthir…

Sticks’ calloused paw squeezes his. Maedhros screws his eyes up, until he can’t see anything at all. Then he blinks, twice.

“We have to get to the forest,” he says, which is the truth. “We will be safe there.”

This is, of course, a lie.

 

If Gwindor meets him, will only the children be saved?

If Mairon finds them…

(No answers.)

 

There are no monsters coming from the compound behind them or the peaks higher up. The horns are silent. They are too far, now, to see whether Haleth has led all their people away. Maedhros assumes that she has. Assumes, with a shuddering breath, that Gwindor and Belle and the others are—gone. He could ask the children why they strayed so far, why in God’s name they _ran_ —

But they are only children.

“Tired,” Frog says.

Maedhros’s leg aches. More than aches; it twinges with the tender pain of swelling. Still, he reaches for the boy, hoisting him up on his unhurt hip.

The forest is near. Frog’s arms collar his neck. Frog hums, too, against the hollow of his shoulder. Like this, they leave the shrubbery and reach the shelter of the trees.

 

“ _Shhh_ ,” Sticks mutters to herself. She hasn’t let go of his hand. They aren’t making haste, exactly, but they are moving quietly.

Maedhros’s nostrils fill with pine. The scent is enough to ruin him.

 

_He—never wakes easily, what with the half-memory of sick-sweet poison and the harpy-claws at his breast. At present, though, it is only Celegorm. Celegorm, his square jaw set and his lips pinched together, tilting his head as Huan might, to say as plain as speaking:_

There is something in the woods.

 

(He shouldn’t have let Gwindor go. Shouldn’t have elided a suicide mission with something in need of saving. He stops in the shadow of a broad-trunked tree, and sets Frog down. He is shaking, shaking very badly, and he thinks he will weep in a moment.

Mairon will hearken, no doubt, to the sound of his sobs.

Mairon has heard them before.)

 

Maedhros sits with his back to the rough bark. He bites his lip. Who was he, in the time before he was only a hunted thing? If there is any self that will help him— _God Almighty, any self at all—_

“Are we safe now?” Sticks whispers.

Maedhros can hear the quiet words, spoken so close, but that doesn't soothe him. He lifts his chin up and down. He knows she won’t believe him, if he keeps on like this. Likely, she doesn’t already. The children must have faith—it is their only strength—they must have _faith_ until…

“We are resting,” he answers Sticks, at last. The dandy eldest, smooth in his movements and generous with his dance-cards. What would he do?

He would long for home and comfort. And once at home…

“Dark,” Frog says. “Russandol, dark night.”

“Not yet, little one. But the sun sets quickly, doesn’t it?” Maedhros stretches out his hand. When he touches Frog’s hair, stroking it back from his forehead, he knows what he must be.

 

(If Mairon finds them, Maedhros will have to kill the children quickly.)

 

“Listen to me,” he whispers. “What do you know of wolves?”

Sticks frowns. Frog’s eyes are round as marbles.

“Bad,” Frog says.

“They’re fearsome,” Sticks says. “Fucking terrors.”

“Yes,” Maedhros says, tugging the corners of his mouth upwards, hoping for a smile. “Fucking terrors. But when they’re young, they’re rather nice. And very quick and clever, all the same. We—I—there is a word for the young of a wolf, in the Irish language. Do you know anything about the Irish language?”

“It’s called Gaelic,” Sticks says, nodding wisely.

No arrow pierces her eye.

Maedhros’s ribs heave. “Gaelic, yes. That’s right clever of  _you_ , Sticks.”

“Belle told me. She can tell you anything, ‘bout languages and tongues and that sort of bit.”

“No doubt she can.” He is trembling, still, but he tries to put an end to the fear in himself. Tries to dig his roughshod heels into the earth. “Well, in Gaelic, which was my language, in a way—the word for a little wolf is  _cano_.”

“ _Cano_ ,” Frog says, putting his hands flat against his cheeks.  

“Will you be my  _canos_?” Maedhros asks, as quietly as the shifting wind around them. The bells of war, lodged in his head, do not cease. “Will you walk on your own feet, very soft, and not make a sound except when I tell you to? I promise it will be better that way.”

 

They go a long way, thus, very quietly. A God of power might call that mercy. The weak know better, but still, Maedhros prays.

 

_Mother Mary, if you please, don’t—don’t make me—_

 

(There is a life, Maedhros supposes, in which the rain does not fall, and the horse and rider do not fall either. And in that life, perhaps, the little altar boy, the little robin red-hair, is taken back to the mountain, too.)

 

_I don’t deserve to, but I did love him. Amrod. Amrod, God, for the sake of him, don’t—don’t make me—_

Darkness creeps. Their shoes are thin; their feet are cold and weary. Maedhros is gritting his teeth and dragging his leg. Hiding meant safety, for these waifs, when Gothmog had him at the whipping posts. But it isn’t so anymore. Not here.

He hides them anyway.

Darkness, having crept, chokes them. Maedhros strikes his foot against—something.

He looks down. Wrenches his hands free of the children’s grasp, covers his mouth, gasping and whining.

“There now, Russandol,” Sticks says, her voice too calm, “Don’t you mind. It’s naught but a heap o’bones.”

 

_In moonlight, Celegorm has grown very tall. The angle of his body is towards Huan, whom he leads and is led by, and Huan is digging in the dirt. He turns up something bloody, something picked-over, just as Maedhros’s sight sharpens. Just as he realizes that the moonlight shines on eyes._

“Tired,” Frog says again, plaintively, when the moon is at its peak through the thatch of pine-boughs above. They must sleep. They cannot go on—forever—without sleeping.

In the distance, the river gurgles and  _runs_. At least, he thinks he can hear the river.

“Here,” Maedhros says, despairing. His voice carries in the silence. He nips his tongue with his teeth. There is undergrowth to cover them. There is—when he lowers himself to the ground, all the strength goes out of him.

_Naught but a heap o’bones._

“You sleep, too,” Sticks hisses in his ear.

He cannot smile. He keeps looking for eyes, and the effort stretches the tendons in his neck to the point of snapping.

Frog noses his way under the crook of his right elbow. Frog says,

“Hungry.  _Cano’s_  hungry.”

“I don’t…”

“Hush up or hop along,” Sticks whispers, severely. “There’ll be food in the daylight, Frog. Wolves know that.”

Maedhros is pitifully grateful. Exhaustion climbs his flesh and bones like the rungs of a ladder. The wind picks up. Sticks leans against Frog. Frog stirs, grumbles, and pushes himself into Maedhros’s lap.

“Mind his leg.”

“It’s all right,” Maedhros says. It is the only thing that is.

The warmth of Frog’s body blooms in his tormented chest. He rests his chin on Frog’s hair. He doesn’t think of how easy it would be to snap the slender neck—until he does. Frog’s small hand beats lightly against Maedhros’s ribs.

“Fast,” he whimpers. “Fast.”

He can feel Maedhros’s heart, then.

Frog nods off in another moment. Sticks is already breathing at a peaceful, slumbering pace. Maedhros weeps, then, but he does so in silence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we are getting close to the end! Hopefully I will have this dreadful saga closed in two more chapters. Comments are really, really welcome. I immediately screenshot them and send them to the author groupchat and we scream excitedly. THAT COULD BE YOU.
> 
> *made some minor edits about terrain and the fact that Mae's ears got pretty blasted*


	21. man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed

Maedhros opens his eyes, and is blind.

Only then does he realize: he slept. He has betrayed the children, by sleeping, and as they lay dead to the world, the world betrayed  _them_.

The rabbit-shuddering panic that courses over him is not an easy thing to strip from one’s skin and bones. It cannot shake the hard earth, but it shakes Frog, who unfurls from his knot of limbs in Maedhros’s lap, whimpering.

Sticks is silent beside him, but she is shaking too. Maedhros’s unseen hand brushes against Frog’s bare feet. They are ice-cold, and damp.

The cold—it must have come in the night. It is  _still_ night, but the darkness consumes them unlike any other darkness. It is absolute. The rough shirt and trousers he wears are sodden, offering no warmth.  Only the ringing in his battered ears is the same. Maedhros’s arms seize tightly around both children, as his heart thunders in his breast.

“Can’t see nothing,” Sticks mutters, close by his ear. Her breath is hot, at least. “Can’t—”

Maedhros should tell her that all will be well. He should whisper those words until Mairon comes out of the blind night and guts them.

His hands are numb, useless. (His hands have been made like this before.) He lifts his arm, free of Frog’s hold, and swipes his clammy knuckles against his eyes.

“Keep quiet,” he says. Speaking hurts his throat. “Please.”

_To speak civil words to helpless children…what good do you do?_

The air smells of snow. Snow, and relentless pine, and sour sweat mingling with the dew on their skin. Maedhros bleeds, where Murphy’s knife struck him—or he did. He finds that the scabs are crusted, now. They ache dully beneath his seeking fingers. His stomach aches, too, reminding him that a warped body carries on with its hungers.

Frog begins to cry, hiccoughing.

The air smells of snow, and is frigid and wet enough to  _feel_  as if snow falls. In the thick irrationality spaced between life and death, slumber and sight, Maedhros imagines that snow has already blanketed them. Has suffocated them of breath, of hope.

He heaves and gasps. It cannot be so. It cannot.

_Think, you fool…_

There: he understands. It is only fog—heavy and chilling and damp. Not absolute. He wrings his hands, made too young again by the bruising chill. Then he sets to chafing Frog’s feet. The knife he used to kill Murphy is tucked under his knee.

“Hush,” he whispers. “Hush, little one. I know it is cold.”

“Will they fall off?” Sticks asks. Her hand has ghosted over his, and she is pressed against his side. Her teeth chatter. “Frog’s feet.”

Maedhros shakes his head. Remembers that she cannot see him.

“No. Quiet, now. Stay close.”

What warmth is in him, but blood?

Once, he burned.

 

He holds the children close and tries to think. A dangerously impossible attempt, really, what with his empty belly and his twisted limbs. The cold is a gnawing monster; the cloaking fog is a waiting monster.

Mairon is both.

 _You are useless, yes_ , he mocks himself, but he cannot stay in his self-loathing for long, because Frog is squirming and hissing miserable little sobs against Maedhros’s neck. Maedhros says, tamping down the hysteria that rises in his throat until he is Russandol—

“What is it, bairn?”

The icy condensation on the boy’s skin makes him feel dead. Dead, and drawn from a river.

“Eyes,” Frog answers, trembling. “Eyes.”

Maedhros squeezes his own shut. He bites his lips, and his whole mind floods. His brow and jaw contract with the tension borne of a single image: Mairon standing over them, gloating, the tips of his soft boots almost against Maedhros’s knees. His hand hovering, waiting to seize Maedhros by the hair. His knife—

“There are no eyes,” Sticks mutters. “But it’s a cold hell, Russandol. We’ll warm if we go.”

She says all this through chattering teeth.

Maedhros tries to stand.

He can’t.

 

Gasping on his knees, he wishes he could despair. He would almost offer himself up for Mairon to kill, out in the wild, if it meant death rather than running—and only for him.

The children are frightened. He knows this from the sound of their breathing. Dawn does not break—shows no sign of breaking—and it is colder by the moment. He lowers himself to the bracken-laden ground.

He can hear them breathing, but he cannot be certain, what with his injured ears, that he hears anything else.

_The river—the river, yesterday, did you hear it, or were you still in a dream?_

“Sticks,” he asks, staring at the ground—he can see the ground—“What can you hear?”

In wiser days, when Gwindor was beside him to be his strength, they chose the river for a reason. No matter how the forest swallowed him up, the river would remain its own road.

“What d’you mean?”

“Can you hear water.”

Sticks inhales sharply, and waits for a long moment.

“Yes,” she says at last. “It’s that way. Ahead of us.”

“ _Canos_ ,” Maedhros pants, to the small shapes hunched worriedly on either side of him, “Take each other’s hands and walk beside me.”

“But you can’t walk,” Sticks points out.

“I will do my best. Let me go on my hands and knees, a little. It will keep me less tall.”

Sticks, ever-practical, likely wishes to say that no one can see how tall he is, in the fog. Her silence is telling. She—and Frog, too—know that their guard is faulty. He cannot hear, he cannot walk, he is broken. Even dying. Maedhros crawls, and aches, and loathes himself again.

They do not even say that they are hungry. He wishes they would.

 

At last the light changes. His throbbing joints do not ease as to pain, but they grow less stiff, and he is able to hold himself upright. Sticks seems heartened by this. Both of the children take his hands again.

His fingers are senseless, wrapped in their icy ones. None of them, even with movement, have ceased their shivering, their teeth-rattling. Maedhros wonders how much longer they needed to lie still and sleeping, before it was mercifully too late.

Oblivion would have been a kinder death.

 

He thinks—

—he would have to kill Frog first.

 

“Why are we going there?” Sticks asks. Maedhros stumbles again, and catches himself on the bright pain that shoots between hip and ankle. At least he can see the trees, now, three or four deep. So deep that the white-edged fog is dark-throated with shadows.

Sticks tugs a little ahead, leading. Guiding. Doing what Maedhros ought to do.

(They will never reach the river in time, at this rate, though he listens with a fool’s hope for its rising call. Time, passing, is the curse of day come again. But why didn’t Mairon take them in the night? Mairon must know. Maedhros—feels quite certain, that Mairon  _must know_.)

Sticks has posed a question, he recalls. Should he answer? He swipes his sore tongue over his sore lips, the world still tilting from the tremor of his near-fall. “I—I can’t tell you yet, Sticks.”

She nods tightly, tension corded along her thin shoulders. Her narrow jaw juts out.  “Keep your secrets. I don’t mind.”

Children always carry their courage in one hand, their fear in the other. Maedhros glances briefly at his swollen knuckles, pinched in their trusting hold.  He tightens the wasted muscles of his abdomen, and pushes on.

 

(He was asleep long enough to dream. He remembers that now, as if the confusion of his own mind clears with daylight, too. In his dream, he saw his grandfather, in the old house—but Finwe spoke with Fingolfin’s voice.

_This is selfishness, Russandol. Selfishness._

Dream-Maedhros did not answer. He stared at the swirling carpet-map.)

 

It should be a comfort, when Frog decides that he  _is_  hungry and he  _is_  tired, and thus, will go no further. It should be a comfort, because Maedhros knows that a child’s defiance means that the child is not afraid—but—

“Oh, blast you, Frog-boy,” Sticks snaps, balling her fists against her hips. “He does this sometimes, Russandol, it’ll pass.”

“Frog,” Maedhros says, keeping his voice low, “You will eat today.”

Frog rubs his sunken belly and whines.

Maedhros rakes a hand through his matted hair and says, “I promise.”

Frog’s little face crumples but does not flush. It as if he is indecisive, half on his way to a cry—an old trick that tugs relentlessly at Maedhros’s heartstrings. Sticks lets out a longsuffering sigh.

“Come, Frog. We will be  _canos_ again, for Russandol.”

Frog considers, and then reaches for the hem of Maedhros’s shirt.

 

_The river is not salvation for one who made it run with blood. Amrod, and the men at the bridge. Jem, and Galway, and the men at the bridge._

_You did not care for them, those lives you took to earn your father’s pride._

 

_How many names you say, when you are dreaming. . ._

The fog rolls back and back, like the ranks of a ghost-army that has deemed the front of this particular battle unsuitable, and called an eerie, silent retreat.

Despite the wetness of their clothes, they are powerfully thirsty. At least, Maedhros is, and he can only guess at the plight of little ones unused to such discomfort. His tongue recalls the vilest memories; Morgoth coaxing him to lap at poisoned water, Morgoth tipping the old flask over his face, Morgoth sending Mairon to his cell with food and drink to force upon him.

This is not the mountain. That grim-shouldered peak may belong to its ghastly master, but the forest will always be Mairon’s.

In some ways, Maedhros knew them both first.

Frog coughs, and begins to drag his blue-tinged feet again. What would Belle tell the children, if she were here? How would she urge them on? He cannot pray to Belle, of course, because she lives. He ought to be grateful, for that.

Ought to be, but the self that understood how to give thanks is dead; living last, perhaps, in Gwindor’s eyes.

“I cannot carry him,” Maedhros admits, to Sticks. He does not think it is cold enough for frostbite, but he winces in sympathy, remembering how his baby hands bled, the winter he became an ill-made man. “Here, help me down.”

Sticks steadies his elbow with surprising strength.

_Will you save me?_

He kneels on his good (better) knee and tears what he can from the hem of his worn grey blouse. Then he wraps Frog’s bare feet, gently but snugly, in the rags.

“This will be a little better,” he says. “We will come to water soon, my  _canos_ , and then you shall have something to drink.”

“Promise?” Frog asks, shaping the word carefully.

Maedhros nods. Smiles, even. Despair is slipping smoother down his throat, now. His ears, especially the left one, sting as if he has been cuffed. “Yes.” To Sticks, he adds, as lightly as he can, “You may have to run, when we come to the water. Even if I can’t. Do you understand?”

Frog’s shoulders curl. He scuffs the packed red-needled earth with his bound feet.

Sticks, for her part, narrows her eyes. “No,” she says. “Shan’t do that, Russandol.”

“You must,” he says. He thought it would be his father’s voice, but it isn’t. “Say that you understand.”

Her face twists. “I understand.” She is a child of suffering; she knows.

(He was a child of comfort, and despite the pain that followed after—he  _didn’t_.)

 

For Gwindor, he gave a leg (somehow). And for the thralls, he gave his ears (in part). He still has the knife; but the fog stole the moon from him, last night.

There isn’t time to stitch all of this together into an evened score of duty. There isn’t time.

 

The river’s echo is a full voice, now, even to Maedhros. The forest takes them downhill. It hems in the mountain, and beyond it is the rough grass-threaded land that rolls and flattens between Diablo’s range—and Mithrim.  Here is the trouble: it is a beautiful country. Diablo is the spine of the earth, wide and generous in its reach, undeserving of what crawls in its bowels. This forest has twice the richness of the East’s; twice the ancient age.

Maedhros thinks:

It is a land that will bury him, never knowing mercy.

All land is whatever men make of it. Its justice comes too late for the living.

Maedhros does what he can to quicken his pace. The fog is almost gone. He strains his eyes, trying to guess the ground’s curvature, trying to build a riverbank out of his hopes, where none exists.

Sunlight, when it breaks through, does so in articulated fingers just as in the outside world, when it is shielded by clouds. Maedhros follows the dancing rays through the sentry-shapes of the evergreens, and sees Fingon.

 

He shuts his eyes and opens them again; Fingon is gone.

 

_No. No._

(Fingon means death.)

(Fingon means death because  _Maedhros wanted him to._ )

 

“Russandol?” Sticks is whispering, to be good, but the shrillness of fear creeps up; he tries to listen to her, to show her that he  _can_  listen, even though he told her he could not hear.

(He is rocked again by voices that do not speak at all.)

 

 _You asked for something, Maedhros._ That is Morgoth, dissecting truth into lies.

 _Perk up, coppertop_. That is Jem, grinning and living.

Fingon says,  _I have the strangest fear._

 

It takes everything he has, not to tell the children to run from him.

And so, when they reach the river, with its real, sloping bank: he gives thanks.

 

The waterfall is nothing vast. Rather, it is the last sharp incline of the forest’s reach, and it spills six feet or so into a broad pool, five or six yards across, whose shallow depths match the remains of the river’s tribute, out and over the shrub-dotted fields.

The bottom of the pool is visible. The bottom of the pool is red needles, grey stones, no secrets. Maedhros scarcely looks at it.

Rather, he looks at the fields, which he can see—through the thinning trees, through the last traces of the night’s fog. He saw all this, from the same side but the opposite angle, outside looking in—but only once. Gwindor was with him, when the slaves stopped along their wretched march, dragging new ties for the railroad laborers. It was the only time Maedhros was well enough for such work; therefore, it was also before he and Gwindor were allies. Before he and Gwindor were  _friends._

(He remembers that the guards drank first.)

 “Is this the water?” Sticks asks, very reverently.

“Yes,” Maedhros says. Sweat and dread crawl down the nape of his neck, leaving him chilled again. He drags his lip between his teeth. “Drink,” he says. “We should drink.”

 

All that is left is to wait for life or death.

 

He takes a step forward. And another.

He knows that the water will be colder than the air, and their clothes, and their  _skin_. He knows that when

he steps

into the water

There won’t be any safety left in the forest or field, because time will have changed again.

 

“It’s cold, I daren’t,” Sticks mutters, but even so, she screws up her face and crouches down, rather frog-like herself. Frog sidles up beside her, and Maedhros must look at them, waiting for arrows. Side by side, they are mismatched, one light head and one dark, but that only makes them more like the ghosts he loved.

Above the waterfall—he keeps looking in empty spaces for Mairon, yet no specter rises. No shock. Only knowing absence, and the memory of Fingon-as-death.

The children stoop. The children drink. Maedhros watches and squints, because the day is so fair outside the bracken walls and roof. His eyes are not prepared for sunshine. His ears are coming to, like a man waking from a nightmare.

 A branch splits, somewhere in the glades behind them. Something—some rigid bird-beak—raps against a tree. Sticks leaps back from the water, affrighted, her arms wind-milling. Maedhros himself screams without making a sound. It is all in his lungs and behind his eyes. Frog scuttles on all fours, hurrying to hide between Maedhros’s legs.

They stay so perfectly in place that any marksman could hit them.  _Them_ , two children and a man. Maedhros hasn’t needed to be a man like this, for a long time. He thought he killed that self at the edge of Amrod’s river. It shouldn’t have gone on so long, his fatal ignorance.

(He only has a knife.)

“Gone,” Frog says, finally, swinging his dark-pated head from side to side. “All gone.”

“No,  _cano_.” Maedhros swallows bile. The word doesn’t bring him home; he didn’t expect it to. “Not gone. We just—we have to wait.”

At the edge of the woodland, the trees stretch upwards, mighty and jagged-branched, thickly thatched with needle and shade, but unencumbered by undergrowth.

Sticks squares her scrawny shoulders. “Do we just wait, then?” she hisses. “Wait by this water, like—like  _ducks_?”

“Not for long,” Maedhros says, with a confidence he does not feel. When wind moves in the trees, it sounds like laughter. His whole body is trying to turn cat-corner to itself. His spine would twist in circles, if it could.

“Cold.” Frog points. “Cold.”

“When the time comes, we’ll run across it.” Maedhros tries for patience, now. He does not feel  _that_  either, but he has had years of practice lying with the way he tunes his words, as well as with the words themselves. He can lie with the dimples at either side of his mouth, and he can lie with his hands, and he can lie in the way he nods, briskly, at the girl who has kept him alive this long, at the boy who is not too small to die. “When Gwindor comes, we’ll run together.”

“Gwindor is coming?” She turns eagerly to Frog. “D’you hear that? Soldier’s coming to take us all home.”

Is the sun at noon’s height?

Maedhros should have been dead yesterday.

 

He tested the blade of the knife-that-killed-Murphy against his thumb, when the children gave his fingers a moment’s respite. He was surprised most of all by its dullness. To slash a man’s throat—it took  _effort_ , and force, with such a weapon. He must acknowledge this.

Maedhros did not hate any of the men at Ulmo’s Bridge. He did not even know the men who built the railroad, well enough for loathing.

Does this lessen the sin, or magnify it?

Does indifferent cruelty damn a man twice over?

_I am going to teach you something you do not want to know._

 

(No one has ever said that.)

 

The children will not go in the water. Maedhros is too weary to order them, at first, but at last he rouses himself from his malaise and bids them try.

“Carry,” Frog says.

“I can’t,” Maedhros tells him. “Frog, I might drop you. Come with me.” He puts one foot in, and grinds his teeth against the icy touch. “We will find warmth, and food, on the other side.”

“No.”

Sticks is shivering. “Gwindor isn’t here yet.”

Maedhros steps back. He sways, and he shivers too. They cannot go anywhere but here, save for one side or the other. Maedhros gave Gwindor a meeting place, as exactly as he could, and he must keep to it.

(At any rate, were they to venture farther, the grassland would reveal them in an instant.)

 _They_  will have crossed in the meadow: Haleth and Gwindor and the rest.

_Will they even find Mithrim?_

_Will they find it safe?_

As it is, a sullen air has settled over their little band. Children are like this, when weary. Frog sits down, chin on his knees. Sticks follows suit. They stare at the ground, their fingers curling in the dirt. Maedhros stares at the tops of their heads, carved out by his fear for them. He wishes, also, that he could forage for food—Celegorm would know, surely, what bounty nature offered, even in cooler seasons.

_Fear, and a desire to be tender. These are your faults._

_What animal are you?_

(He wishes he knew if the knife would be enough—if it comes to that—or if he had better do it with his hands.)

 

_What animal._

If he could feed them, he wonders if they would obey.

Oh, for anything that could have saved them from depending on the ancient compass of the river! Mairon chased Amrod to a river’s edge. Will he not do the same, here? Maedhros links his fingers behind his neck, aching.  The edge of the scar twinges with a pain he knows is no longer really there.

“Bairns,” Maedhros says again, not snapping, not harsh, not even…not even  _sternly_. He has none of that fire left in him. Nothing that could hurt. “Please…”

And then, through the sharp sunlight:

Movement, far off. He has seen it, and he cannot  _unsee_  it—for all that it is but a black speck, appearing and disappearing, weaving among the hillocks and valleys. He slips the knife from his belt.

“Sticks,” he orders, the fire rekindled, “ _Hide_.” And he gestures behind him, to the thick-trunked, thick-limbed pines. Only when they have tucked themselves behind the rough expanse of the nearest tree does he follow. He presses his back against it, he keeps his hand—on his knife—

The speck is gone. The speck is there again. It is a speck no longer. Nearer, nearer, a man without a horse. If he keeps up this pace, he shall be on them in a few moments.

It could be Gwindor. It could be Mairon, though that seems—unlikely. Maedhros stays alert, eyes never leaving his mark, and the dart strikes him in the neck.

He tears it out wildly, as if nothing could be more natural, more reflexive. His thoughts come by twos and threes. He is on his knees before he knows it, weak with the first wave of a quick-acting poison, and he reels back as every branch of every tree angles towards him like the lines of a fracture in glass. It is an age and a hairsbreadth second, before he sees the figure crouching in the draped boughs above.

Not a dozen paces off, Mairon lowers the pipe from his lips, and smiles.

Then he drops on light cat-feet to the ground.

“Run!” Maedhros shouts, “Run for the river!” He himself rears to his feet, and stumbles in great loping paces towards the shallow water.

The children splash across. The children—they obeyed, they ran,  _they are ahead_   _of_   _him_. On the other side of freedom there is the shape of a man, clear even to Maedhros’s blurring eyes.

The shape is Gwindor.

“Run!” Maedhros cries again. The word is a prayer more than anything else. He has never prayed like this. His legs—his legs won’t hold him, and just before he goes facedown in the riverbed, he thinks that Gwindor looks like home.

 

(He doesn’t want to die.)

 

A snap of thunder, singing overhead.

Gwindor calls him. The children scream, and the water fills his mouth, his ears, his lungs.

As it began, so it does not end.

The hand that drags him up by the hair is one his whole terrified body knows.

With the gloved fingers of his other hand, Mairon grasps him by the jaw, dragging it down so that water rushes out between Maedhros’s teeth. Mairon does not speak. He only _looks_ , gloating.

Maedhros has no power to stop himself from being lifted. His legs may stagger, but he does not fall, locked in a hold against which he has no limbs to fight. The poison hums in his veins, in his head, in his eyes. With his last strength ebbing to his trapped jaw, he turns his face towards Gwindor as best he can--because Gwindor can see, with his eyes and his heart.

(Nothing that could hurt.)

 

_Go_

_You know that Gwindor will save them if he takes them away, what does it matter if he comes back for your bones?_ (I want to go home)  _You have one life, and you have spent it. Not wisely or well—but it is over, now. Tell him that you do not blame him. What do you have, that you would not give him? Them?_

_Go_

_Nothing is well, nothing has ever been well_ (Please don’t leave me)

(Please, please don’t leave me)

 

“ _Go!_ ”

Maedhros cannot see anymore, but he smiles. If it is a lie, it is meant to be kind.


	22. no living man am I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are. If you've made it through the whole fic, I thank you for your time and patience and feedback. This fic speaks for itself, but the ramifications will be felt for the next 500k of the AU (left-hand fingers crossed it gets written.)
> 
> Trigger warnings this chapter for amped-up violence, serious body horror, end-of-Angband stuff. 
> 
> I know that this fic is a really gross, dark, tragic journey--but I appreciate everyone who engaged with it in all its shades and details. It's the most in-depth character study I've ever written, or may write yet, for some time.

Mairon cuts Maedhros’s belly open with a long, single stroke, peeling flesh from one hipbone to the other. He uses the knife that killed Murphy.

Maedhros and the knife are very much the same. Both are defined by dead bodies. Maedhros fell in the river, when the dart pierced his neck, and Maedhros let the knife fall from his belt when he ran.

Mairon fished it out of the river (the knife), and sharpened it on a whetstone he kept with him. Mairon—

(The dart. There was a dart in his neck.)

(That was a long time ago. Before— _before_ he killed Murphy? No. Before he killed the children, for which, he hopes, there was no _after_.)

_Deep enough to reach your spine._

Mairon says— _said_ —aloud what he would do, before he did it. (This is in the past.)

 _I shall carve you wide and grinning._ He turned the knife from side to side, just as his smile turned. The knife, like Maedhros, was alive, and already red.

The knife speaks, all the way down to the spine. The air hisses into the wound like rain on hot stones.

 _Better to only have a knife_ —someone said that to Maedhros, once, or perhaps they didn’t. The sky is falling to ash, granting him embers for guts.

He has neither arms nor legs.

 _Tendon by tendon, as a butcher might_.

Mairon cut off his arms first. After the dart (before—), he began his work at a shoulder. _Back and forth, back and forth_. Maedhros fainted.

Maedhros must have fainted, or else the river drowned him, or else… _no_. There _was_ a river. He is very certain that there was a river, and two children who were never really his.

So. He fainted over one limb, and woke to find the other three writhing like serpents in the black earth. But, Mairon tells him, he can see. Mairon has left him his eyes.

By the light of a single torch, his chin tilted to his helpless chest, Maedhros watches what goes on below.

_Inside you…_

Mairon buries his hand in the burbling blood-mess, which spills out like meat from the split side of a pie. He drags at the long strand of an entrail, then slashes one end with his gory knife.

He flings the ribbon-length of gut across Maedhros’s face.

 

_Alouette, gentille alouette_

_Alouette, je te plumerai_

He sings _this_ as he walks round and round Maedhros, Maedhros with no arms and legs. This is _before_ he lights the torch, and reddens the knife. Time is all out of order, since the river and the blood and the faces who were as numerous as blades themselves. Numerous, and just as sharp.

Maedhros must have loved someone, must have known what love was, to be so quick with his knife. There exists, in the ashen sky, a path of stars. They are the candles of the dead, and some of the dead were…

Maedhros is breathing very hard and fast in his chest, although the severing of his limbs brought him no pain. He fainted because his body was spent and could not make a ready payment of bone and sinew. Because some part of him still ached at the thought of being less than whole.

He knows where and when Mairon walks. The boots tell him: boots brushing his quavering ribs and the top of his head. The quaver (him) reminds him of the black forest, and the small cold hands, and the way he _slept_.

 

 _You are my little lark,_ Mairon whispers, dropping to his knees at Maedhros’s empty shoulder. Breathing sourly into his face. _My_ alouette _. And I will pluck you._

When it comes time, Maedhros cries over the entrail. It sticks to the bridge of his nose, and it smells foul and dead. His cries are little more than mewls, really, because that is all a body without arms or legs or half its insides has strength for. All that a body dragged out of a river, dragged on and on and on, can find within its lasting bones.

He shuts his eyes under the blood, and lets the tears leak out.

 _You burn yourself_ , Mairon says, and he is right to say it. The tears scald and salt Maedhros’s cheeks, searing through skin, mingling blood and blood.

Mairon laughs. His hands scrabble, and he takes the offal-worm away. Mairon opens his eyes to find the laughing mouth hovering a hand’s breadth above him. Mairon’s hair and his eyes run down his face in the torchlight flicker. He sidles, crablike along Maedhros’s cringing side, until he can dig his hands into the gaping wound once more. Then he is busy for some time, talking all the while. _An inch here and an inch there_ , he simpers, as he cuts short lengths of the spooling innards and tosses them aside.

He begins to sing again, very quietly,

 

_Je te plumerai la tête_

_Je te plumerai la tête_

_Et la tête! Et la tête!_

_Alouette, Alouette!_

_I have not come to your head yet, Maitimo._ _Let me stuff your mouth with the tips of your ears, your nose. Are you hungry, Maitimo?_

(If. If there was a river, and a body above it, what then? If the body belonged to nothing, or was very weary, what was in the water to make the head go mad?)

(No, not in the water.)

He chokes on the hot bits of meat that Mairon’s sharp fingers force between his teeth. He doesn’t—he doesn’t _remember_ anything. He doesn’t remember, and he cannot beg. Begging will not do any good; though what _ill_ it can do a man bleeding down into the soil? Is begging for things that have hands to rub together, or knees to kneel?

Perhaps he simply does not want to learn whether he still has a voice to speak.

 

Mairon’s teeth crawl out of his mouth. The dart crawls down Maedhros’s throat, pricking all the way. When first it stung him, he saw nothing at all.

He remembers that, but it isn’t a memory that matters.

Mairon says, _I lived in the forest when I was young. The birds belonged to me. But they did not leave me there, the people with your sickness…your mouth and your blood. They paid. I killed the boy first, and I fed him his fingers before he died. Ah, me. You do not deserve any better than that whoreson, that fat-livered brat. I take you apart, this time. Here is one ear, and another. Wash it down, Maitimo; drink. You must not be greedy as the swine are greedy, even if you are their kin._

(Maedhros and his black-webbed throat swallow blood.)

When he has eaten the tips of his ears, he burns his cheeks with more tears. Mairon sways. There are two Mairons, and both of them have twice as many teeth as they should, as if the crawling teeth went out and found new fellows.

The only thing that Maedhros knows for certain is that he has not bled enough life, yet. 

Mairon whistles under his breath. Little trickling trills and long, low notes. It becomes the clearest sound in the world, somehow. When one Mairon has finished the melody, the other Mairon says,

_Now, we are ready for your eyes._

(There are two of Maedhros, also. One did not come out of the river, and so is left to sleep.)

Still, the lark is silent. He cannot beg, but it is more than that. He cannot scream without a throat. This is the moment he learns he does not _have_ a throat.

The lark lets the hunter pluck him.

The web of poison is black. The ashen sky is black. The cooling organs, dipped in bile—everything burns to black.

_Je te plumerai les yeux_

_Je te plumerai les yeux_

_Et les ailes! Et les ailes!_

_Et le cou! Et le cou!_

_Et le bec! Et le bec!_

_Et la tête! Et la tête!_

_Alouette! Alouette!_

_Oh,_

_oh,_

_oh, oh_

(What is a body with no arms or legs or innards supposed to remember about the life that hides inside it?)

(What is a life supposed to know about the forest that eats it bone by bone?)

 

Maedhros wakes to the sound of a falcon’s screech. Celegorm was not particularly bookish, but he loved to read old falconry lore, as if there was any opportunity to take up hawking in modern New England. As a consequence, it is Celegorm’s fault that Maedhros knows how the lofty bald eagle has the weakest cry of any bird—

—and how many a hawk outstrips the eagle in grandeur.

 

Maedhros _wakes_. What does it mean to wake? He is dead—bled out— _dead_ —

He is horribly cold, which is what being dead _might_ be like. He is also stiff, also laden by a heavy ache between his temples, behind his eyes.  

All of him, poured out. Days and nights, blood and dreams—poured out.

The fever, broken…if a fever is all it was.

“Very good, my skinned lark,” Mairon says, his face appearing, upside down but very real, in Maedhros’s line of vision. Maedhros struggles, fiercely, only to find that he _does_ have arms and legs after all. They are flung wide and bound tightly to stakes in the damp ground. “You are yourself again.”

Maedhros gasps, and shuts his teeth against the shuddering breath that would otherwise escape him. Mairon stoops, lifting something in his gloved fingers. It is a length of rope, little longer than his hand. “How you wept,” he says softly. “When you were gone mad, in the night, and thought this to have come from your belly.” He tosses it aside, considers, and then sets his boot in the center of Maedhros’s chest. He presses until Maedhros coughs.

“Speak to me, lark. What did you believe?”

Maedhros whispers, through chattering teeth, “That—that you cut me open.”

Mairon smiles, nearly close-lipped. The tip of an incisor peeks through. “Ah.” He shrugs, and in the light of day, Maedhros sees that the furs he wreathes around his shoulders are no longer solely black. Copper glints among the tufts of ebony—copper _hair._

Maedhros shuts his mouth, and his eyes. In an instant, hard thumbs drag his eyelids open.

“I will cut them out, lovely one, if you hide them,” Mairon mocks him, bright as the sunshine that finds them here, alone. “Keep them wide. Come now, where is the slut who bandied words with me no matter how many irons I thrust into his cool flesh? Where have you been hiding _him_?”

His voice is gentle. When his hands leave Maedhros’s welling eyes, they become gentle too, smoothing his hair and stroking the lines of his throat. Maedhros retches, and chokes on the bile that floods his mouth, because his head is tipped back in Mairon’s hold.

“You are so afraid,” Mairon purrs, “That you make yourself ugly and ill. We both of us have changed.”

If Maedhros asks this monster to kill him—

He won’t.

 

“You shall eat and drink,” Mairon says. His knife glides along the numb flesh of Maedhros’s wrist. Something springs away. Mairon laughs through his nose. “You are free,” he says, and cuts the other wrist loose as well. Then he grips Maedhros’s shoulders and drags him upright. Maedhros holds his weight, as best he can, on his hands.

His entrails are not pooled on the earth around him, but he still lets slip a strangled sound of pain, for there is—there _is_ blood crusted over his filthy shirt, and there _is_ pain stitched between his hips, just as there was when Mairon first…

He scrabbles frantically for the hem, and lifts it up, exposing the skin beneath.

The scarred letters are fresh-cut again.

“ _No_ ,” Maedhros moans. He claps his hand over his mouth to stymie the word, too late. Staunching a wound would be easier.

Mairon laughs.

“Aye, lad, it is not so bad. Not so bad at all.”

Maedhros flings his head up in shock, as if it is all a nightmare, all one more deception.

Mairon says, again in Galway’s voice, but with a flicker in his eyes that is raptor-cold, “You should eat. Keep up your strength.”

Maedhros flails back, falling heavily on his shoulder-blades. Panic scrambles over exhaustion. Mairon hoists him up again.

 “ _Alouette_ ,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “A little priest used to call me this. _Alouette, alouette, it is an old song, my dear boy._ As if I was his to skin.”

Maedhros does not know if Mairon knows that the priest’s death belonged to him. He shakes like a leaf. Every bone of him, shaking. He tastes blood.

“I pray you,” he says, begging. “Kill me like the dog you know me to be.”

“Eat, Maitimo,” Mairon answers smoothly, reaching into the satchel he keeps under his furs. “It is a little meat, _alouette_. Not even yours.”

 

Maedhros swallows the meat.

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“You fear me, do you?”

“Yes.”

Mairon tears a few fibers of jerky between his long teeth, and suggests, “If you answer this honestly, perhaps I will cut your throat for you. Would you like that?”

Quietly—“Please.” (But he knows he won’t. He knows he won’t kill him; why can’t he stop himself begging?)

“Do you fear me more than anything?” His eyes burn like the torch of last night, but they stay quite still and solemn in his bony face.

Maedhros nods.

 

When Mairon has given him water to drink, and Maedhros has lapped it like a dog, without spitting it out again, Mairon binds his arms behind his back, each wrist to the opposite elbow. Then he fashions a noose for Maedhros’s throat, and letting the length of it dangle down to his wrists, he slips it through the bar of his arms, drawing it tight enough that breathing requires Maedhros to tilt his head as far back as he can, even when, without the support of his hands, he can no longer stay upright.

His ankles are still fastened to the stakes in the ground.

Mairon leaves him there for some time, staring at the sky.

 

If Gwindor is still running, or even if he rests…he will be safe.

Maedhros bites his lips to stifle his sobs. His hands are as helpless as they were when Morgoth took them in his own, time and again. In the light of day, he knows that he lost days and squandered nights, by failing to rest when it was safe, to run when it was not.

 

When Mairon comes back, he settles himself at Maedhros’s back without speaking. He unfastens the rough closures down the front of Maedhros’s shirt, sliding it from his shoulders. The air is frosty against Maedhros’s skin.

That is not what frightens him.

One of Mairon’s hands locks under Maedhros’s jaw, holding him steady. His other hand positions the knife. He makes no taunts, and asks no questions, as his blade lets flow the scar of Feanor’s name.

He pauses only once in his tireless etching. He releases Maedhros’s chin and ruffles his hair with fond, light fingers. Then his grasp bites deep again and his knife bites deeper, slicing beneath the hollow of Maedhros’s clavicle.

When he is finished, and Maedhros is whining weakly behind his teeth, grieving flesh he should already have grieved, Mairon says, close by his ear,

“I am no longer angry.”

 

The forest does not look the same without the children in it. Maedhros, sick with the scent and sting of his own blood, hobbles after his captor as best he can. He can scarcely walk; scarcely breathe. This makes it nigh impossible to disobey. He no longer has the mind, for that. His head swims, and the world swims too, and he is still bleeding.

“Who flogged you?” Mairon asks, stepping deftly over the coiled-serpent root of a great tree.

Maedhros tries to see the trick in the question, and cannot find it.

“What?”

“There are new lashes. They have ruined mine.”

“Gothmog.”

“ _Zut alors._ _L’andouille_.” He shakes his head so that his pale hair shifts over the dark furs on his shoulders. Maedhros does not know if it is more or less disconcerting to see his face when he speaks. “Did you take his woman?”

Maedhros swallows over the lump in his throat. “No.”

“Ah, _oui_. No woman would want that ugly hide.” A silent laugh follows this, so that all of him shakes, this time. “But the grey one did.”

“The—the grey one?”

Mairon stops short, swinging about, so that the leash he has round Maedhros’s throat draws tight in his hand, snapping Maedhros’s neck towards him. He grins.

“Your river-man,” he hisses. “The grey one with the broken shoulder. He loved you more than you thought, unless he wears the same face for every sorrow.”

Maedhros cannot speak because he is not breathing.

Mairon shuts his eyes, savoring, and then murmurs, “He looked just as he did when I cut his boy-brother to pieces.”

 

_There’s a look._

_You?_

_Just one._

The old—the young Maedhros would say, _At least he will never die at your hand, you motherfucking bastard_ , and the old Mairon would beat him bloody for it.

The old Mairon would not confine himself to old scars.

This Maedhros, the lifeless shell of Russandol, who was the shell of someone else to begin with, ducks his head and waits for Mairon to force him on again.

The pain in his weighted leg, from the rough splint and the wrong-healed bone and the iron shackle on his ankle, is somehow the last part of him that is human.

 

“I saw you,” Mairon offers, almost tenderly, when time has blurred. “You and the little brats. At night, before the fog came.”

Maedhros’s leg fails him. Maedhros—fails. He falls to his knees and Mairon lets him. His arms are bound behind him, so he doubles towards the ground without catching himself. He wheezes.

“The boy saw me, in the night. He did not have the words to tell you. I’d have slit his throat if he had.”

_Eyes._

 “I am a murderer and a whore and more besides,” Maedhros grits out, through cracking teeth. “But so are many in the world. Why—”

“Because I hate you,” Mairon tells him, deadly calm. “Get up. If you are a murderer and a whore, you should pay your debts to a man like me.”

“You are not a man.”

“Not entirely,” Mairon says, but the words seem to amuse him, for he laughs a long while, and drags his prisoner on.

 

When next he falls, he cannot walk again. It is too much. Too much weariness, and pain, and something that Feanor would have called _frailty_ , when Feanor was both a man and a name. Mairon lifts his eyebrows so that his forehead creases. His tongue darts out to moisten his lips.

“Wait here,” he says. “ _Wait here, my dear boy. It is not meet of you to keep so quiet about the condition of your own limbs_ —”

If Maedhros’s arms were not bound, if his hands were not pinned down, he would cover his ears. Morgoth’s voice sounded very real in Mairon’s mouth, and Maedhros is still afraid of Morgoth, too.

Mairon is gone again.

The rope at Maedhros’s throat is tight enough—tight enough to stop him breathing. He thrusts his chin forward. The obvious choice is always the last he thinks of. It is as if the essence of his being, the fool creation of dust or God, wants badly to live forever.

He has to remind himself how to die, even when he believes it is all he longs for. Survival has become his most shameful weakness.

He stops his breath until he stops—

 

“None of that, _alouette_. We do not wring the bird’s neck, until we are ready to drain its body.”

Mairon has a horse straggling behind him. He must have tethered it and left it waiting at the forest’s eaves. It is a skittish, rangy thing. Maedhros is still faint and uncertain of gravity and air alike; he has not much say in the matter of being bound to the stirrups and saddle, though he helps move his weight where he can, rather than fighting. He does not know if he shall regret not fighting; for now, his face rests against the creature’s rough mane.

Mairon’s eyes are too close for him to weep in peace.

There will never be any peace again. He wonders, and then forgets to wonder, why he thought of peace at all.

“Tell me, Maitimo-mine,” Mairon says, in a voice without accent or tone, “What do you think shall happen to you in our mountain?”

Mairon opens his mouth to give the offering of death, of torment. Nothing leaves his lips.

“Just so,” Mairon murmurs. “Just so.”

 

He is used to pain. He is, at present—

No. He is not able to define the _present_ , not with the way his head throbs in a deep, deep well of weariness. So many parts of his body do not belong to him. He could be lost like this, with his eyes on the reins vined about Mairon’s forearm, with his sore breast jolting against the horse’s shoulders, with his sight splitting and heaving and joining back together again.

“I have dreamed of you,” Mairon says.

 The scent of smoke filters blackly through the air. Maedhros tries and fails to lift his head to see better.  

Mairon draws up short, and steps back so that he can dig his fingers against Maedhros’s bloodstained shirtfront, forcing him up.

“They were good dreams.”

Maedhros can see, now, where they are. The empty smithy gazes at him, as hollow as Belle’s lost eye.

He never even spoke to her, about what Mairon did.

“The road to Master Bauglir will not bear a horse for long,” Mairon says, peering into his eyes as if they, too, are holes. “How far can you walk?”

There is no answer that will save him or kill him. Maedhros is strung, always, between those two.

“How far could you walk without the tendons of your ankles?” Mairon wonders, taking up the reins again. Without pausing for another hopeless answer, he says, “As I dreamed, I rode south to Doriath. It is a land of cattle and cattle-shit. They gave me an iron, and a hot fire. The creatures bellow, when marked.” He shakes a little with his silent mirth, and Maedhros shuts his eyes, even though his body urges him to stay watchful, what with the rougher ground under the horse’s hooves.

“Thingol of Doriath,” Mairon says, “Has a daughter.”

Maedhros knew the name, but now he doesn’t. He doesn’t know anything at all but his sweat and fear, and the way that even fear is not enough to keep him from wishing that Mairon would let him sleep.  

 

(With more blood in him, more hope in him, and less understanding of the way his father lied about the world—he has been here before.)

 

(Maedhros does not dream.)

 

The sun is setting in blushing, golden bands of cloud when Mairon cuts Maedhros down from the horse. He does not let Maedhros fall; indeed, he holds him upright, so that they are eye to eye. Mairon stands firmly. Maedhros would not stand at all, were it not for the heavy grip of Mairon’s hands.

Maedhros thinks, very slowly, _these are the same hands—the same eyes—_

Mairon’s eyes, so close, are still amber, though night is closing in to darken everything. Mairon breathes hardly at all, but his nostrils flutter.

Maedhros cannot look away.

“You are a worm,” Mairon murmurs. “And such creatures should crawl. But I made a promise to my master.”

 

(He has been cold for such a long time.)

 

Such a—is it Mairon who is holding him—is it—

 _Alouette, alouette_. When will the lark be left to bleed itself dry? Someone must cut its throat first.  

 

So. At the beginning of hell— _led me in among the secret things_ —there was a boy, and he thought himself ruined because he understood the necessity of strength. The boy had the use of both arms and both legs. He had a good deal of breath in his lungs. Some people thought him useful. When hell began, there was already a good deal of grief in his heart, too. It kept him alive, at first, because he had been taught to use grief for such ends.

The boy was never intended—the boy never intended—

There are nights, there are names, there is nothing. _He doesn’t remember any of this._

 

Two men who are not Mairon cast him down on the smooth-sanded floor of—of the hell he knew best.

Maedhros lost all of it. The last hours, the last memories. He is gasping and coughing—his body is too exhausted to retch—and his arms and legs are unbound.

No one fears him. No one…no one _keeps_ him. He lost the last hours. They are gone.

Everything—

He shuts his gasping mouth with effort that feels like someone else’s, and when he opens it again, he manages a word. A name.

“Mairon…”

“A strange name to call for aid, Maitimo. He is here, but so am _I_.”

Maedhros has no mastery of himself, even down to the crook of a finger. He must wait for the deliberate tread to echo louder and louder in his ears. He must _wait_ , eyes drifting open and shut, to see Morgoth’s moon-pale face wax over him.

But Morgoth isn’t pale.

He is plum-dark with anger.

“You fetid, thieving _wretch_ ,” Morgoth hisses, swooping so low that he blots out the light. “This is how you repay me?”

Maedhros does not even search for words to speak. Words are hiding, somewhere with time.

“You were not surrounded by friends in my forge, at least.” Morgoth directs a kick to his ribs, and Maedhros groans.

He can still make sounds, then. He has a voice, which is like a lark, but not like a skinned lark…

(He loses the thought.)

 

Morgoth’s shoes tread away. He echoes. All of him echoes, louder and fuller, until Maedhros’s numb ears ring as they did when the powder went off.

“No doubt you saw Maeglin as one of your brothers, eh? No doubt you thought he would admire the _great Maedhros Feanorian_ , thinking him a craftsman instead of a whoring traitor.”

 

_One_

“Perhaps you thought him loyal to you, _admiring_ of you, at least until he saw you beg. It was not so. He was mine— _is_ mine! From the moment you began your work for me…work you _promised_ me, lest you think I have forgotten it—”

 

_Two_

Perhaps they are alone in the room. Perhaps Maedhros himself is alone in many rooms.

 

_Why are you counting?_

Maedhros has never forgotten Morgoth’s voice, but now he does not know what to do with the tones of it, the words strung together. The ceiling overhead is deltaed with fine cracks in the plaster daubed upon it. Hairline fractures, only, but that is how most breaks begin.

“My hunting-hound brought you back for _my_ hands, cur! Brought you back limp and spent, spent on trying to ruin what you could not earn! I will not forgive it.”

He would not have done it so himself, the ceiling. In another life and time, he knew how such things _ought_ to be done. With clever hands and proper tools, he would have made the sky stay in its place.

_It isn’t a sky. You never—you never made your way out of the earth, you silly wretch. Fetid, thieving wretch._

Maedhros…yelps when the blow comes to his ear, this time.

Then he cannot breathe at all.

 

_Oh,_

_Oh,_

_There’s a look?_ Just one. _You._

(It is all wrong.)

 

Morgoth crushes him, one black-clad knee grinding into his sternum, his florid face spittle-spewing close.

Maedhros still has a sternum, and two lungs that _need_.

“You used to beg for mercy, cur—beg now, if you dare, without teeth or a speaking tongue.”

Maedhros raises one hand and sees it fall out of the line of his eyes again. He—

Morgoth’s fist crashes into his face.

Over and over, over and over. Pain is like a wave.

Pain is like a wave, like an army of swarming shadow-spots, like a bird that sings until its song is too sharp for the wind to hold. Pain is panic, and salt-sea blood.

Pain is the sound of himself screaming, or trying to, without any understanding of how he does so with no air in his lungs.

Something snaps (that is his jaw). Something crumples and blasts the swarming spots from black to white. Maedhros’s body springs back to life, or to the writhing, flayed space between life and the near-end.

(That was his nose, drowning his throat with the sea.)

Certainty, in these things, is impossible; but then the weight and pressure are gone, leaving only the blood and all of the pain.

 

_Let me have him, Master. You forget yourself; I know you do not wish to be hasty. I know you._

An—echo—

 

_Ah, small one. Your nose is broken; see how you are choking! Here, I shall set it for you. Let all your sanguine spirit flow out! We—_

“—shall not kill you, yet.”

Mairon grins down. He is only blurred and red because Maedhros’s world is thus.

In any world, Mairon would be horrible.

Maedhros hears the garbled, hideous sound of someone sobbing through less than half a face.

“Now all of you,” Mairon whispers, “Belongs to me.”

 

The wall sets itself at Maedhros’s back. It rears up from the floor to do it. Maedhros can draw air in and out through his nose and mouth, but doing so is a raw, sick business that screams of irreparable hurt. All savaged flesh feels the same; it feels frightened. Something cold and unbearable touches the hairline cracks of him.

“Open your eyes,” Mairon says. “You know that is the bargain we have, you and I. You must always open your eyes.”

Through the bruised light: there are too many Mairons, too many Morgoths.

Maedhros sees blood-rotted knuckles, and the gleam—

 

His eyes, his breath, his frightened flesh.

Feanor’s ring.

 

When Feanor—   

—his blood was on his son.

And now the son’s blood is—

 

“I understand,” Mairon opines, his voice quite civil, quite clear, “That the very sight of him is offensive to you, sir. You know quite well how his insolence has pained me, in times past. But if you will—consider what has _wronged_ you.”

Morgoth swells and thunders, silent.

“First,” Mairon suggests, “It was his mouth. His mouth wronged you, and I fitted him with silver lips. Where are they, pray? They might have saved us all a little…heartache. Yet given leash, he grew greedy. Think, sir.”

Maedhros used to wish for a particular death. That was before all that made him Maedhros was gone. Even his leg…he no longer feels it.

“His hand,” Morgoth says, from very far away. “The device you gave me.”

“Copper for copper.” Mairon’s face shifts and sharpens, because Maedhros’s flesh is not finished with being afraid. He can see Mairon very clearly, a fracture in focus. “A clever fox, was this cur. He has skill in all his fingers. Give me the hand, Master. Then I shall take his.”

 

“Maeglin,” Morgoth calls. “Step in, and give me what you have with you.”

Maeglin is a boy with a child face and enemy eyes. Does Maeglin still have his eyes? Maedhros strikes the back of his head against the wall. It does not yield. It does not yield, which must mean that he was trying to get away.

Footsteps, and a coffin-door, and a pale face: all swarm the corners of the war-etched room. Maedhros might see the pale face if he looked. He doesn’t. He hears no voices because he is listening for his brothers’. He always listened for his brothers’ voices, when Maeglin spoke, but of course he did not know that in the past, and he barely knows it now, because he isn’t a brother with half his face missing.

Even if he looked for Maeglin’s face, he cannot see much, not after that first moment of seeing Mairon. The pain is a cloud, and it fills the bones of his cheeks, his chin, his nose. It covers his eyes, though he keeps them open.

“Your hand,” Mairon says, when no more footsteps fall. “Maedhros Feanorian, give me your hand.”

 

Maedhros does not know which hand is asked for. He does not want to offer them up. He offered his mouth up, but his hands are different. Even now, when he has lost all else.

He tries to see to the keeping of both. If he puts them behind his back, they will be hidden. But the wall is at his back. There is nothing more to do.

Then cold metal stings against his skin. Cold metal, against his palm, and the pads of his fingers, and his knuckles…

“Your eyes again,” Mairon whispers.

Maedhros blinks, hard.

His right hand is gloved in copper. It splays the bones flat out. Two holes mark each finger; six are ranged across the plate over his palm. Mairon says,

“Hold his head, sir. He might yet give a struggle.”

“You have learned a great deal, Annatar,” Morgoth says, one hand wrapping round the base of Maedhros’s neck. It is the hand without the ring. Maedhros would feel it, he is sure. “How shall you—”

“With the first hammer you gave me,” Mairon answers, childlike and pleased. “I have kept it always.”

 

_If you can imagine—if you can imagine a body that did its best to be free, even from its own soul—_

(He really does try.)

 

It is hard to say what is _known_ , before or after. Time is like that, when lost. Maybe Maedhros does not understand the mechanics of his martyrdom, any more than he can count his moments. He is not himself; he is not even pieces of himself. The facts, then, are these:

There are sixteen copper nails in Mairon’s satchel, and the hand he takes is Maedhros’s right. There are sixteen copper nails, and sixteen holes in the grisly glove. Mairon forces the hand and the flesh inside it to the floor, fixes the first nail in the first hole (which covers the lower joint of the thumb), and takes up his hammer.

 

He chooses another nail. He says,

_Steady now, Master,_

and Morgoth’s grip tightens about Maedhros’s neck and shoulders, except that Maedhros _cannot_ — _feel_ — _that_ —

 

Mairon pinches his thumb and forefinger together, rubbing away the sticky slickness of the blood. Brightly: _Three more fingers. You may keep singing, alouette._

 _Alouette?_ Morgoth asks, with a low, rumbling chuckle. His good humor returns. _Alouette. The lark. The lark—it does sing, and sweetly. Eh, Maitimo? Eh, Feanor’s boy?_

_He gives us a song, and another bone. The smallest finger is a delicate one…I do not wish to fasten it to your floorboards for its thinness. Just so, Master. Lift it, the wrist. Ai! I may have crushed the bones._

_I did not know_ , Morgoth muses, _that a lark could howl._

_What are you going to do with him_ Why, whatever you like _You have done so well I would leave the judgment to you, my young eagle_ You have a mountainside at your disposal, sir, I see no reason why he cannot mark it _For a few days, then…_

“And then,” Mairon says, “I shall finish him in my own way?”

Morgoth claps him on the shoulder. His hands are scarlet—both their hands are scarlet—but his face has resumed its pallor, its corpse-contentment. There are too many ghosts in him. “You have earned that, and my praise,” he says. “At last.”

 

( _Where are we going?_ )

 

The world is upside down.


End file.
